Autumn has placed some unusual demands on my time, so I have not been available for frequent updates.
I have also been front page blogging at NH Insider.com when the opportunity presents itself. You can access my blog there, from here.
I will be cross posting those blogs here, and vice -versa, as soon as I get all my pre-winter chores completed. (I need another week or so).
The timing stinks with the election so close, but the house and the family have to come first.
No, Not Click Click Boom by Saliva, (Available here if you are feeling mislead)…
…Clique Clique Boom!
My first real encounter with the Political Clique in New Hampshire occurred on NH Insider. It manifested itself as an idea from another blogger that the value of certain political opinions (mine, actually) were somehow limited because I am not a member of the class of persons who had specific, active civic experience.
I found this—at best amusing. The narrow minded notion that someone seeking to advance their political career would intentionally limit themselves to the Bubble-think mentality of a closed (dare I say ideologically inbred) group of thinkers was patently absurd. The fact that they put it in writing was, well, priceless. But then it is politics.
So, imply put, (after a broader, but decidedly impromptu investigation) there appears to be a small legion of elitists among us in New Hampshire who have neither the time nor inclination to listen seriously to the people who elect them.
Now this is not supposed to be surprising by any means. We are all familiar with the lack of accountability further up the food chain, but at the local level New Hampshire is built on government not just of the people, but literally by the people; your neighbors, friends, co-workers, and so on. It’s very personal, and given that we have the most representative state government in the US, and I believe the third largest on the entire globe, it seems unusual for someone to cling to such a notion as elitest bubble-think.
But, when you consider the natural proclivities of mankind to gather about him wealth and power, it is not really all that hard to see where this could become a problem. There have always been small towns, with small people, some with very small minds, thinking thoughts far too big for their tiny heads to hold. And sometimes they will make for themselves a tiny dynasty inside these tiny crowded places, leaving very little room for anything you might have to say that endagers their tiny world.
Well I have a message for you who would engage actively as the voices of the people. You are charged as advocates of nothing greater than the common interests of your electorate, if for no other reason than because you cannot attain your position by any other means than their will. This does not make you beholden to every individual whim, but it does require you to accept that without their reasoned opinion—particularly of you—your value is at best fleeting. Your membership could go Boom. So you would be wise to acknowledge their counsel, to answer their questions with humility, and to respect them for the opportunity to govern which they have granted.
And if they don’t drive you insane, you may find yourself stronger for it.
The following comes directly from Reagan 2020.US . It’s modern day relevance–44 years later–is startling. Special thanks to Tim Condon and RLCNH for the link. Here is Ronald Reagan at his best.
Given as a stump speech, at speaking engagements, and on a memorable night in 1964 in support of Barry Goldwater’s presidential campaign. This version is from that broadcast.
1964
I am going to talk of controversial things. I make no apology for this.
It’s time we asked ourselves if we still know the freedoms intended for us by the Founding Fathers. James Madison said, “We base all our experiments on the capacity of mankind for self government.”
This idea — that government was beholden to the people, that it had no other source of power — is still the newest, most unique idea in all the long history of man’s relation to man. This is the issue of this election: Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.
You and I are told we must choose between a left or right, but I suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down. Up to man’s age-old dream–the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order — or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. Regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would sacrifice freedom for security have embarked on this downward path. Plutarch warned, “The real destroyer of the liberties of the people is he who spreads among them bounties, donations and benefits.”
The Founding Fathers knew a government can’t control the economy without controlling people. And they knew when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose. So we have come to a time for choosing.
Public servants say, always with the best of intentions, “What greater service we could render if only we had a little more money and a little more power.” But the truth is that outside of its legitimate function, government does nothing as well or as economically as the private sector.
Yet any time you and I question the schemes of the do-gooders, we’re denounced as being opposed to their humanitarian goals. It seems impossible to legitimately debate their solutions with the assumption that all of us share the desire to help the less fortunate. They tell us we’re always “against,” never “for” anything.
We are for a provision that destitution should not follow unemployment by reason of old age, and to that end we have accepted Social Security as a step toward meeting the problem. However, we are against those entrusted with this program when they practice deception regarding its fiscal shortcomings, when they charge that any criticism of the program means that we want to end payments….
We are for aiding our allies by sharing our material blessings with nations which share our fundamental beliefs, but we are against doling out money government to government, creating bureaucracy, if not socialism, all over the world.
We need true tax reform that will at least make a start toward restoring for our children the American Dream that wealth is denied to no one, that each individual has the right to fly as high as his strength and ability will take him…. But we cannot have such reform while our tax policy is engineered by people who view the tax as a means of achieving changes in our social structure….
Have we the courage and the will to face up to the immorality and discrimination of the progressive tax, and demand a return to traditional proportionate taxation? . . . Today in our country the tax collector’s share is 37 cents of every dollar earned. Freedom has never been so fragile, so close to slipping from our grasp.
Are you willing to spend time studying the issues, making yourself aware, and then conveying that information to family and friends? Will you resist the temptation to get a government handout for your community? Realize that the doctor’s fight against socialized medicine is your fight. We can’t socialize the doctors without socializing the patients. Recognize that government invasion of public power is eventually an assault upon your own business. If some among you fear taking a stand because you are afraid of reprisals from customers, clients, or even government, recognize that you are just feeding the crocodile hoping he’ll eat you last.
If all of this seems like a great deal of trouble, think what’s at stake. We are faced with the most evil enemy mankind has known in his long climb from the swamp to the stars. There can be no security anywhere in the free world if there is no fiscal and economic stability within the United States. Those who ask us to trade our freedom for the soup kitchen of the welfare state are architects of a policy of accommodation.
They say the world has become too complex for simple answers. They are wrong. There are no easy answers, but there are simple answers. We must have the courage to do what we know is morally right. Winston Churchill said that “the destiny of man is not measured by material computation. When great forces are on the move in the world, we learn we are spirits–not animals.” And he said, “There is something going on in time and space, and beyond time and space, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty.”
You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we will sentence them to take the first step into a thousand years of darkness. If we fail, at least let our children and our children’s children say of us we justified our brief moment here. We did all that could be done.
Turns out Barney Frank, from 1991-1998, while actively involved in the finance committee responsible for Fannie Mae’s oversight, had a gay live-in Lover who was a high ranking executive at Fannie Mae.
Frank is on the record insisting that these GSE’s were not taking on unnecessary risk, that there was no need to add new layers of regulation, and for some reason, this latest revelation is not deemed a major conflict of interest?
The official parted ways with both Fannie Mae, and Barney Frank, in the same year. But years later a,fter even more deception and incompetnece (By Frank, Dodd, and their Party) now we are the ones taking it up the Fannie.
