The American Dream or the American Memory?

My grandmother came to America in the late 1800’s when she was a kid of twelve and not speaking any English.  She left Russia first and foremost to escape the Czar and the pogroms that were killing Jews.  She wanted to determine for herself what life should be like rather than exist as prey for the Russian cavalry.

Once here in America she discovered another reason for being in this country and that was the ability to not just live without persecution, but to be able to elevate her station in life.

Elevate her station in life, what does that mean? It means simply and is defined by, “the American dream.”  It is the ability to take two rags, as in the play “Fiddler on the Roof” and rip them in half and make two sales from one; “If I were a rich man, daidle deedle daidle, daidle dum”. My grandmother left a country with no opportunity to come to one for freedom and opportunity.

The American dream worked for her, as she married and built a thriving business and in fact it thrived right through the depression and well past my birth. My grandmother’s business sent two sons to college who if in Russia still, would be behind a plow. What is worse is that it would have also been someone else’s farmland. My family thrived in America down through the successive generations and all because my grandparents came to “the land of opportunity”, America, to live their dream.

What about your dream? Are you living it, or are you watching it and your opportunities in life being eroded away by a government that is doing its best to foster mediocrity and lack of ambition. Now where have we heard about mediocrity and lack of ambition before? The Soviet Union for one, when “Back In The USSR”, folks did not have any ambition and all was quite mediocre as the Soviet government, thinking they new best and what was good for the masses, dictated from up on high, telling the people what they would do for a living, what educational direction they must take, whether they liked it or not, what crops to grow, what quotas to make and so on.

After my grandmother left Russia, the Russian Czars were replaced by “the government elites”.  Sound familiar again? Then if so, this is where we are headed. We are driving down the road and well on our way, to a government that essentially tells you how to run your life and what you are entitled to in it. Forget ambition, if you fail or sit on your ass, the government will take care of you. You will not only not need to work to earn your way, many of you simply will not work at all and take the simpler road to mediocrity. Maybe those people were destined to be mediocre to begin with? Some of course are, but does that mean all of us should be as well?

I resent a government that thinks they know better than all of its citizens about everything, as they continually prove otherwise.   On many levels, my common sense and yours have more promise than any of those louts in DC. I also resent a government that continually lies to me. Why, because lying is not a trait to be proud of and also because a large percentage of the population believe without question when told them and thus vote for hacks who then pass laws that at best threaten our way of life. The biggest of all lies is about Obama care and Medicare. They shove this mandatory plan down our throats and then allow their cronies, mostly unions, who will vote their thanks, to opt out with waivers.

They lie to us about the real costs, which started with a claim of about 900 billion and now the government admits it is closer to two trillion and I guarantee you by the year it is implemented it will be closer to 10 trillion. The biggest lie of all, is that while the scream they are defending Medicare, which is going broke, Mr. Obama, steals one half trillion from Medicare to finance his own scam of Obamacare.  He and his cronies while yelling the Republicans wanted death panels actually have their own, with 15 shtumies, on a board who will sit there and make judgments about our health care and will ration it. Here is a classic example of dummying us all down to a lesser level of quality care in order to pay for the ambition of a politician looking for a legacy instead of solutions.  Obamacare is also a major depressant to the American economy as business is now far less willing to take risks. Thus we are stuck in a slow moving economy despite drastic spending measures by the administration.

What were some of the solutions other than Obamacare?  Well if you started with the premise of leaving what is not broken alone and improve from there, you could start with allowing insurance companies to cross state lines. Right now in Alabama one insurance company has 90% of the policies. That is not competition. Let Blue Cross and whoever else step in and compete. Also there is tort reform which is law in some states but not all. The ultimate lawyer, Mr. Obama, would not like to see his support among attorneys who support him in great numbers dwindle, if he supported tort reform, the capping of litigation for health claims. We could also have spent less money, insuring the very poor and indigent, with a Kaiser like healthcare minimalist program rather than a blanket program to “cover us all”. Don’t fret over the term minimalist, as that was exactly what Obama allowed the unions and McDonalds to achieve at less cost to themselves.

Where are we going with a government who allows Czars and agencies like the EPA, who just lost in court twice in a row in recent days over decisions they tried to impose on business and land owners that were crazy. One was trying to invalidate a decision by the Core of Army Engineers who studied and then provided permits to the company regarding coal mining and the other, which told a land owner that his totally dry land was a “wetland” and thus could not build on it. Business is also being drowned in bureaucracy and the “laws of unintended consequences” created by congressmen who do not read what they even write themselves. These same hacks write laws that are so bad and so full of loopholes that they knowingly create them that way in order to allow administrators down the line to actually “write law on the fly” as addendums to the original law. This is what they did with the appalling Dodd Frank bill.

Government is fine to regulate safety to a reasonable extent. Life is full of risks, and government cannot regulate against all risks in life, but they sure are trying to. Government was meant to protect our borders and deal with the foreign entities beyond them. Currently the policies of this government have stalled business growth to a near halt, in what is one of the slowest recession recoveries in history. Government should be seeking ways to grow the economy and encourage business investment rather than slow it down.  Government was not meant to replace the marketplace for new ideas and economic growth of the nation, just look at the Chevy Volt and the Solyndra solar panel for examples.

Government was not meant to provide opportunity to all, but just a fair access to invest in oneself and create your own opportunities in life. The only opportunity one is entitled to in this life is to make use of one’s own talents, educate one’s self and if one is truly indigent then government as well as private institutions can be there to help. Government can offer direction and advice, but it is not governments roll to make us all equal but to allow for equal opportunity for us to grow and thrive and to make sure there are not any illegal impediments preventing us from achieving our goals. We are truly not all equal, do not all share the same ambition, IQ, looks, common sense or talents. It is not for the government to dummy us all down and try and make us equal in all those arenas, but to step away and allow those who can thrive do so, and to compete in the marketplace, as has been done over the last several hundred years in America.