"Disturbing Echoes From Our Socialist Past"
By Ron Ewart, President
National Association of Rural Landowners
and nationally recognized author on freedom and property rights issues
© Copyright October 14, 2009 - All Rights Reserved
And you think that Obama invented socialist/Marxist policies in America. Hardly! Seventy six years ago, another socialist/Marxist/dictator (FDR) took control of the reins of political power in the United States, as the alleged savior of the people who were being torn asunder by one of the many emergencies (the Great Depression) Americans have had to face since they declared their freedom from an arrogant British King ..... emergencies that are in large part, created by government itself. Instead of letting a free country save itself by the actions of free people using free choice, ingenuity, creativity, productivity, low taxes and regulation and a government limited by our constitution, those in Government saw a quick way to make the American people dependent on government and thereby getting them to vote for those who "saved" them. Or put another way, "buying their vote" with money from the public treasury, money that the government has a fiduciary responsibility to religiously protect and spend wisely, in strict compliance with the explicit instructions contained in the Supreme Law of the Land.
Describing what FDR did TO America would take volumes and many volumes have already been written covering those events. FDR almost single handedly took America from a free, wealthy, hard-working and prosperous nation and converted it into a welfare state during his three plus terms as President. After starting his unprecedented fourth term, he said this on a cold January day in 1944, after his re-election:
"This Republic had its beginning, and grew to its present strength, under the protection of certain unalienable political rights—among them the right of free speech, free press, free worship, trial by jury, freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. They were our rights to life and liberty. As our Nation has grown in size and stature, however—as our industrial economy expanded—these political rights proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness. We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. “Necessitous men are not free men.” People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made. (He should know) In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all… Among these new rights are “The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries, or shops or farms or mines of the Nation; The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation; The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living; The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad; The right of every family to a decent home; The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health; The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment; The right to a good education.”
It is unbelievable that any President who swears on solemn oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States as written, would utter such words. His oath, nor his power as President, did not give him the authority to re-write the Constitution, as he apparently was attempting to do with this speech.
We would like to address one event that took place in 1937, the year this author was born. As part and parcel of FDR's continuing New Deal programs in the 1930's, the U. S. Housing Act, passed in 1937, provided housing assistance for low income families and individuals. It was codified into the United States Code as Title 42, Chapter 8, Section 1437f. It became known as Section 8 Housing Assistance and is currently administered by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). The program is now known as the "Housing Choice Voucher Program". Still a "skunk" by any other name.
Today, the Federal Government is spending over $20 Billion per year on Section 8 housing alone, assisting over 2,000,000 households, or around 8,000,000 to 10,000,000 people ..... people who no doubt will vote for those providing the assistance.
From an article published in the Policy Archives on-line magazine in August of 2005, the following statements were made about Section 8 Housing: "Over the past several years, the program has come under fire for its rising cost. (surprise! surprise!) From 2001 to 2005, the cost of the program has increased by over 34%, although the number of people served has remained roughly the same. These cost increases can be attributed to a number of factors, not the least of which is the structure of the benefit. The value of a voucher is calculated as roughly the difference between rents in a community and 30% of participating households' incomes. In recent years, rents have been rising faster than incomes, which, along with federal policy changes designed to expand household choice and deconcentrate poverty, has driven up the cost of a voucher and therefore the cost of the program. In FY2005, the overall Section 8 program, at more than $20 billion, accounted for over half of the entire budget of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). The voucher component alone constituted more than a third of HUD's budget. In order to provide that funding level while remaining within discretionary budget caps, congressional appropriators enacted funding cuts to almost all other HUD housing programs."
On further investigation we found that 50% of the recipients of Section 8 Housing were single, 44% were single with children and married couples with children hardly registered on the graph. Could it be that government housing subsistence replaced fathers?
But what illustrates the true nature of Section 8 housing occurred recently in an e-rumor about one Sharon Jasper who was shown in her Section 8 home, above. Please note the furniture, flowers, hardwood floors and one very large flat-screen TV. Now that is real poverty! A tough life if there ever was one.
Like so many rumors, there is an element of truth in them. Purportedly, Sharon has spent 57 of her 58 years living in Section 8 housing for all but 1 of her 58 years. Apparently, it was a legacy passed down from her parents who moved into Section 8 housing in 1949 when Sharon was just six months old. Sharon has even passed the legacy down to her children (where is the father?) but fears they may have to get jobs to pay for the utilities and deposits. God forbid! She laments about that one year she spent out of public housing. "I tried it for a year", Sharon said, "you know, working and all. It's not anything I would want to go through again, or wish on anyone in my family, but I am damn proud of that year." Damn proud? Really!
Section 8 housing is Sharon's "free" gift from the working people of America. No doubt Sharon is receiving food stamps as well. She believes she deserves every bit of it and that it is her right. The big question still remains, under a Constitutional Republic is free housing to others a right, when the cost of the free housing must be extracted from others with the force of law (taxes), rather than through voluntary charity?
Whether the e-rumor is true or not, millions of people like Sharon are the victims of generational dependency on federal, state and local government handouts, all paid for by the producing members of a wealthy America. Subsistence for housing, food, college, SSI, health care, transportation, etc. are paid out or handed out to low income families and individuals by the millions. But instead of it being a helping hand up to a productive life, much of this largess has become a life unto itself.
Although it is a deep injustice that so much of our tax money has been spent (or is it wasted) in this manner, the deeper tragedy is the outright destruction of human lives who have found it easier to live off the sweat and hard work of others (that's you and me) rather than being proud of their independence, responsibility and self-reliance, had they taken the truly American path of hard work and receiving a pay check for the work they do, or the elation that comes from achieving a worthwhile goal they have sought, or receiving an honest reward for a job well done ..... but not a Nobel Peace Prize for achieving nothing.
Now, our current government, instead of letting a free country save itself by the actions of free people using free choice, ingenuity, creativity, productivity, low taxes, less regulation and a government limited by our constitution, those in Government are using the same quick way employed in the 1930's to make the American people dependent on government and thereby getting them to vote for those who "saved" them. Or put another way, "buying their vote" with money from the public treasury. Money that the government doesn't own.
Unfortunately, 2009 is a far cry from 1933 in terms of the exponentially exploding costs of socialist promises made by government in the last 76 years, who did not have, nor do they have now, constitutional authority to do what they are doing. With unfunded liabilities of well over $100 Trillion dollars (that's Trillion with a CAPITAL "T"), adding more socialist programs onto the rising annual deficit ($1.4 Trillion) and national debt (over $12 Trillion) is not only unconscionable and insane, it is treason by any other name.
As the number of Sharon's of this nation grow larger as a result of grossly negligent government premeditated socialist policies, those who must pay for the Sharon's of America will have to dig deeper and deeper into their pockets. One wonders at what point will those who must pay, cry out "enough is enough" and either hide what they earn, cheat, or join Sharon and the millions of other Sharon's, in a life of generational dependency, paid for by those hard-working Americans who haven't seen the "light" yet?
One other question remains and that is how much damage can Obama do to America, before he and his co-conspirators in Congress are replaced by voters who are hopefully, getting wiser by the minute?
Ron Ewart, President
NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF RURAL LANDOWNERS
P. O. Box 1031, Issaquah, WA 98027
425 222-4742 or 1 800 682-7848
(Fax No. 425 222-4743)
Website:
www.narlo.orgCheck out NARLO's "Letters to Congress" campaign
at
www.narlo.org/letters.html
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Topic: Political facts happening in case some SDA's wants to know (Read 81780 times)
