Happy Days

“Happy Days are Here Again” written the year I was born (1930) and used in the movie “Chasing Rainbows” but more popular as the FDR campaign song in his presidential race. It is still used at every Democrat Convention and even during the time of the Great Depression when unemployment was 18% until 1941 when FDR and his communist VP Henry Wallace were busy with their collectivism (58 million pigs killed, estimated 100,000 acres of crops cut down) in an effort to control the spending and corruption of the Federal government. Those who even at that time, had been dumbed down by political promises believe that happy days were here again. Does the tune sound familiar at this time when unemployment in North Carolina has reached 12% and 40% of the houses are in foreclosure? Does the tune sound familiar at this time with “change of Mr. Obama”? When our largest corporations, our largest banks and even Wall Street besieged by government with Federal Reserve and the Federal Monetary Fund now dictating your every move.

In the past, in my speaking and writing, I have been accused of being too negative. The truth is the truth whether anyone believes it or not regardless of who speaks it. Men do what they do because they believe what they believe In the Saul Alinsky book, “Rules for Radicals”, the target was decided and you worked towards the target. The target of government take-over, financial, automotive, insurance, banking, etc. became the target and in a few months, they have been taken over. When will you people awaken to what has happened to your country? I can say with the apostle Paul, “I bear in my body the marks of our Lord Jesus.” (Galatians 6:17)

I have a right to speak. I am a totally blind, 100% disabled service connected veteran, and for 40 years have stumbled every day of my life, at age 79, still working, still paying exorbitant taxes, still hoping for happier days. I have filing cabinets full of letter duplicates which I have written to politicians about local, state, and federal conditions most of which were never answered, And if answered by some generic “say nothing assistant.” Charles Rose, former congressman, said he could have used my letters to warm his apartment. It is obvious, from letters both individual and from the parties that the main interest of most elected politician is “re-election” and raising money to buy the election like the local city counsel running campaigns, talking about their interest in the welfare of the electorate.

Their only interest is in “picking the pockets” of the taxpayers so they can spend and spree (as they did recently on a Washington splurge) to exercise their own extravagance to bring acclaim to themselves. You like to call yourselves “civil servants”, you realize servitude in the way you react to being interrupted as a servant. Most politicians and bureaucrats do not act like servants but more like masters. In your recently passed legislation, “Cash for Clunkers” house bill number 298-119, passed in conjunction with funding for our war effort. The ludicrous idea that my taxes paying for someone's “clunker” will ease our depression is as asinine as Mr. Obama's idea that you can come out of debt by spending more money.

Honest politicians with common sense, the sense of any hard working, over-taxed laborer or veteran would demand that you put Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke, Henry Paulson, Tim Geitner, Horst Koehler, Dominique Strauss-Kahn (IMF Managing Director) in jail for the insanity involved in the aiding and abetting, enabling this new administration to crash the economy of this country. This disabled veteran, sleeps with his window open at night and is well aware of the clunkers on the streets playing their radios as loud as possible (certain tunes to indicate the drug they are selling) and I am sure these drug salesmen will be thrilled with your largess.

From the depth of poverty, an eastern NC tobacco farm, I worked my way through eight years of university education going to school during the day, working at night (selling books door-to-door in the summer). My first car was a 1941 Plymouth, working in the tobacco fields to buy it for $85. My next car, was a 1952 Chevrolet. To this minute, June 20, 2009, your government has not assisted me with anything, my education, food stamps, etc. I went to school for a long time. My head was in books that most people could not possibly comprehend. When the rest of you were out partying and playing golf, I was working or studying. I could have had a good life ,but went into the military service as a medical officer, and have spent my life as a blind veteran. I am not complaining, I have a uniform in the closet left for my burial. It would still fit and I would be honored to serve YOUR country again.

I have been too much a patriot to buy a foreign made car. Four of my uncles were wounded in the South Pacific during World War 2. Why should I buy a Japanese car? I wrote letters, warning American manufactures, talked directly with an assistant to the General Motors president (I have a driver for my 13th Cadillac, at present) I quoted such names as Saab, Volkswagen, Mitsubishi, Suzuki, Toyota, Honda, Volvo, and Porsche and predicted that American dealers, grabbing for the almighty dollar, would regret turning the American consumer to these makes. If board members of these automobile corporations such as General Motors, Ford, Chrysler, etc. had any business sense at all, they would have been pushing American made cars. But, since most corporate board members are there because of their political prestige (Erskine Bowles, GM etc.) they were thinking only of their elitism, their huge salary as a board member, and we have witnessed the insanity of the loss of the American automotive manufacturing industry.

I sat next to the British Ambassador to Nigeria in the airport at Lagos, Nigeria. He said, “you Americans are so stupid. You try to impress the world by cutting your own throats.” We were talking, at the time, of the American largess in sending grain and food supplies to the hungry people of Africa but not sending anything with which the people could store the food. He said, “Just simple, cheap metal or plastic garbage cans in which they could put the food would keep the food away from rats and other animals.” For years, we tried to keep the colonial workers in third world countries loving us by buying raw materials with which to build, while we made money on the products. Now, we have these same people, still poor, putting the cars together in their country at low wages.

Most of the world's poverty is below the 30th parallel; the very place you are sending automobile assembly plants where these and other products are assembled. Those poor workers cannot afford to buy them (my passport has been stamped in 157 countries) and the citizens of the country which you represent in the crime capital of the world, Washington DC, cannot afford to buy anything without government assistance. Margaret Thatcher once said, "The trouble with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money."

The insanity of Washington politics can be summed up as follows: our hardworking, God-fearing, over-taxed, parents, grandparents and forefathers gave their very best in toil, time, and talent to build a great nation, even to the giving of their children in battle and now we are seeing it totally destroyed. It is like building a house, and then setting it on fire. When one removes a band-aid, the pain can either be slow or jerking it off quickly it is all over. Hospitals are full of patients who are dying slowly from chemicals. If there are those in our country who so hate our country, our way of life, instead of making the death slow, why not just “nuke” the whole thing and just get it over with. Those of us who claim the name of Christ have a far, far better place to live. Life here, in spite of everything I have tried to do has not been that great for me. There is no fun, no future in the existence of any disabled citizen. In my future home, I don't care about a mansion, streets of gold, I just hope I have been faithful enough to squeeze in.

“I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.” (Romans 12:1)