"Notes and Quotes"

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Sunday, September 13, 2009

An Open Letter to President Obama - # 7 9/12 Tax Payers March on Washington

September 13,2009


An Open Letter to President Obama - # 7

9/12 Tax Payers March on Washington


Dear Mr. President,


I am sorry I missed you when I was in Washington last weekend. I told my friends I was sure you would be there to meet and talk with so many of your constituents. I guess going to Minnesota to rehash (for the 273rd time) your vision for government run healthcare was more important than talking with (according to ABC News) well over one million Americans who were there to share their views with you.


It would have been a perfect opportunity for you to get to know us better. There were kids too young to vote with their parents who do vote. There were moms who came to Washington alone, leaving Dad to watch the kids, because, as Leisa S. of Chattanooga, TN said, "I am SCARED (that is the word she used) about the future my daughter will be facing." Some had healthcare they liked... some did not. None wanted government controlled healthcare. There were Democrats, Republicans, Independents, and several other parties represented. There were those who were employed and those who were looking for work and some who had given up in frustration. There were veterans, seniors, gays, Latinos, blacks, whites, rich, poor, middle class... pretty much a cross section of this wonderful country. But everyone I spoke with said they would not have missed the opportunity to be here and voice their concern and their fear of a now uncertain future. Most said, in one form or another, that it was your policies and direction that caused that fear and uncertainty.


Mr. President, many of these people were very concerned about the massive debt your administration is building up. Not that previous administrations were any bargain but in a few short months you have managed to increase it by a factor of almost four. Most I spoke with do not believe you can spend your way out of debt nor tax your way to prosperity, but that is exactly what it seems you are trying to do.


Still more were concerned about the apparent abandonment of our free enterprise principles. The vast majority of the people I met were opposed to government bailouts of any kind. In order to succeed at anything it must also be possible to fail. Many fear that your policies are marching us head long into the abyss of Socialism or Statism. Taking over control of the automobile companies and financial institutions is NOT what we want or what you were elected to do. Having major (and minor) segments of our government and economy overseen and run by unelected and unconfirmed individuals with direct reporting authority to you, and not the congress and the people, is NOT what we want or what you were elected to do. Yes, I know other presidents have had these advisors or "Czars", but never in these numbers and with this scope of unchallenged authority.


You could almost take the temperature of the crowd by the signs and flags that almost everyone carried. Signs like:

"Government Doesn't Work... Please Return My Taxes"

"The Best Social Program is a Job"

"Trigger was a Horse... Not a Health Plan"

"1984 Was NOT an Instruction Manual"

"Tolls $30.00, Gas $100.00, Hotel $200.00, Having my Voice Heard PRICELESS!"


Some of these folks can really cut to the chase. You would have learned a lot by reading them. It would have been helpful to you to understand their sentiments and better serve the American people. You are still trying to do that... aren't you?


I must tell you how in awe I was with the spirit and patriotism of the people I met this weekend. Mr. President, these folks LOVE their country, but they are afraid ... plain and simple. While I cannot speak for all, I can tell you they feel the current trend toward bigger more intrusive government is NOT what they want or what you were elected to do. I suppose that is fine if YOU want to live that way, but believe me, most folks at the Tea Party in Washington and those all around the country decidedly DO NOT.


I hope you are not taking the position that the people who attend these rallies are "angry white mobs" or "Brooks Brothers Brigades." I was in the thick of the crowd for eight hours and not once did I see or hear a cross word or violent act. The crowds were orderly and respectful of the Nation's Capitol by picking up after themselves. There was no trash or debris left behind. By and large the attendees were polite, respectful, and very passionate regarding their deep allegiance to this country.


Many I spoke to came to Washington because of their belief that their representatives were no longer listening to them or acting on their behalf. They assembled at Freedom Plaza early Saturday then marched down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol. Thousands and thousands of them giving up their weekend to express their displeasure with the direction the country is now headed. Boy, I wish you could have shared some of your weekend to listen. If you are seriously looking for bipartisan support you probably should listen to these folks. They represent the "bi" in bipartisan.


As a former community organizer, I am sure you have a warm spot in your heart for the over one million people who came together to express and support their common beliefs. They came from all over the country, in small groups, to collectively let you know how they feel the government should conduct it's business. Clearly it is a different course than you are pursuing. I can only assume (hope) that you listened and will alter your course accordingly. After all isn't community organizing all about "hope" and "change."


We truly are an exceptional people. We love our freedom and independence but are more than willing to share it. Our military is the mightiest force the world has ever known. With little or no effort we could virtually control the world and force our will upon it. Thankfully our value system does not need or want that kind of control. We respond to aggression if provoked. We come to the aid and defense of people all over the world and ask for nothing in return. Our military victories are just that, military. We do not occupy our vanquished enemies land... we rebuild it. We make an extraordinary effort to minimize the injury and killing of innocent civilians. Don't we wish our enemies were as considerate? The pride I saw expressed in our military was heartwarming and genuine.


We are compassionate toward the less fortunate who live in our country. Most of us believe in giving a helping hand up rather than a simple hand out. We believe in free speech and the right to dissent without fear.


This was one of the best and most moving experiences I have ever had. It was not just the wonderful people I met or the inspirational speeches I heard. It was the shared concern that our "special" way of life is slipping away. It was our willingness to come together to fix what is wrong... peacefully. We came to implore you not to change our country in a way that robs us of our freedom, individuality, and self reliance. It was a reaffirmation of my belief in the greatness of the United States and the uniqueness of our way of life. Repeated chants of USA, USA, USA by 1,000,000 strong is loud and compelling. It stirs your patriotic juices.


This Tea Party cemented my belief that the United States today is the result of a remarkable Constitution written by men of great vision more than 200 years ago. No where on earth has this experiment in representative democracy been duplicated. We are the envy of the world. We went to Washington this weekend because we want to be sure it stays that way. Mr. President, if today did not get the attention of you and your administration as well as the attention of all our Representatives and Senators I would respectfully suggest that all of you get yourselves checked for Attention Deficit Disorder.


I am sorry you were too busy to join us. It would have been a real eye opener for you.




Respectfully,




Steve Mishket

stevemishket@comcast.net

September 13,2009


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"Notes and Quotes" Archive

  • **“Nothing can destroy a government more quickly than its failure to observe its own laws, or worse, its disregard of the charter of its own existence.” – Justice Tom C. Clark (1899-1977) US Attorney General, 1945-1949
  • **"If the Constitution no longer matters, then the federal government no longer exists. The same document that restricts the federal government is also the document that created them and gives them their authority. Either it is in effect, or it is not." Gary Henderson
  • **"The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who, in the time of moral crisis, maintain their neutrality." Dante
  • **“When anyone gets something for nothing, someone else gets nothing for something.” -Anonymous
  • ** "My desire to be well-informed is currently at odds with my desire to remain sane" Author unknown
  • ** “There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.” — Peter F. Drucker
  • ** “If getting employer benefits without paying union dues is BAD, why is getting government benefits without paying taxes GOOD?”
  • ** “It's not that ‘the rich’ aren't paying their ‘fair share,’ it's that America isn't. A majority of the electorate has voted itself a size of government it's not willing to pay for.” - Mark Steyn
  • ** "One of the penalties of not participating in politics is that you will be governed by your inferiors." ~ Plato
  • **"Fathom the hypocrisy of a Government that requires every citizen to prove they are insured...but not everyone must prove they are a citizen."
  • **If it matters, measure it: How do you know how much you’ve slipped or improved in an area unless you measure it? How do you take something “to the next level” if you don’t know what level you’re already at? How do you set concrete goals without a sense of where you are and where you want to go? If the success of your venture depends on it, you need to find a way to measure it.
  • **The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them. - Mark Twain
  • **Political correctness is an approved form of censorship.  Based on emotional appeals at the expense of reason, political correctness mandates that inconvenient truths or facts be swept under the carpet.  Or else. Free speech, guaranteed to all Americans under the First Amendment, is on its way to becoming moot.  The political, media, and intellectual elites who control the terms of national debate and the rules of civil society have succeeded in censoring opposing views, limiting debate, and demonizing dissent.  Perception is on its way to becoming our new reality. Nancy Morgan
  • **Ronald Reagan once defined an economist as somebody who sees something working in real life and wondering if it will work in theory.
  • **"Fathom the odd hypocrisy that Obama wants every citizen to prove they are insured, but they don't have to prove they are citizens." ~ Ben Stein
  • **“America is the greatest, freest and most decent society in existence. It is an oasis of goodness in a desert of cynicism and barbarism. This country, once an experiment unique in the world, is now the last best hope for the world.”--Dinesh D'Souza
  • **No politician has any business talking about tax increases until ObamaCare is repealed. It’s the most comprehensively failed legislation of the modern era. Like a taxi that runs on plutonium, it’s costing us a fortune, and making us sick, even while it’s sitting there and doing nothing. Sold with fanciful promises and fraudulent cost estimates, it’s another expensive scheme to buy votes with taxpayer money, ending with a planned crisis the government will be only too happy to step in and “solve” by seizing even more of our wealth and liberty. Its passage stymied serious attempts at real improvements to our health-care system, including tort reform and allowing the interstate sale of insurance plans to increase competition. As with so many other delusional Big Government programs, the opportunity cost of passing ObamaCare, and passing up on reasonable plans that enhance individual liberty, rivals its staggering price tag. We’ll come trillions closer to a balanced budget by shredding it. -- Dr. Zero
  • **'If the Arabs put down their weapons today, there would be no more violence. If the Jews put down their weapons today, there would be no more Israel' -- Benjamin Netanyahu
  • ** This is almost unbelievable. Barack Obama is more concerned about Jews building homes in Jerusalem than about Iran building a nuclear weapon. --Ben Stein
  • ** I hope we have once again reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There's a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: as government expands, liberty contracts. --Ronald Reagan
  • ** "As an American I am not so shocked that Obama was given the Nobel Peace Prize without any accomplishments to his name, but that America gave him the White House based on the same credentials." - - Newt Gingrich
  • ** An ideal Federal government in our country wouldn't take much from you, do much for you, or get in your way . --John Hawkins
  • ** The banking crisis wasn't caused by a lack of regulation. It was caused by regulation that pushed banks to make bad loans. --John Hawkins
  • ** An ideal Federal government in our country wouldn't take much from you, do much for you, or get in your way . --John Hawkins
  • **Not too long ago, two friends of mine were talking to a Cuban refugee, a businessman who had escaped from Castro, and in the midst of his story one of my friends turned to the other and said, "We don't know how lucky we are." And the Cuban stopped and said, "How lucky you are? I had someplace to escape to." And in that sentence he told us the entire story. If we lose freedom here, there's no place to escape to. This is the last stand on earth.--Ronald Reagan
  • ** A final word on Tea Party numbers.  The Obama Inauguration left in its wake 100 tons of trash on the Mall that required herculean efforts by the District and the Park Service to clean up.  And it devastated the grass surfaces of the Mall that necessitated budgeting millions of dollars to repair.  Saturday’s Teapartyers left behind a west lawn and Mall that could be used for the U.S.Open.   The sparse trash that was left was neatly stashed in and closely around the too few receptacles provided.  And police reported zero arrests.-- William Campenni
  • ** There is no distinctly Native American criminal class...save Congress. --Mark Twain
  • ** What this country needs are more unemployed politicians. --Edward Langley
  • ** To be born a U.S. citizen is, as Cecil Rhodes once said of England, to win first prize in the lottery of life.
  • **"Free speech does not include the right to deceive". --Author unknown
  • ** Although racism certainly exists in this country, it has become blessedly rare and marginalized. Some of the best evidence you can find for that is Barack Obama's election as President. Only in a country as colorblind as America could a black man easily win the Presidency when 75% of the votes were cast by white Americans. --John Hawkins
  • **I think we need a Constitutional Amendment that says: 1.  Congressional salaries are tied to increased jobs, per capita income and increased GDP. 2.  Any raise for any member must be approved by a super majority in his/her home district or state. --Tom Hall
  • **There is a certain irony in an administration denouncing ordinary Americans who get together to express what they believe and to confront authority, when that administration is led by a man who began his career as a community organizer, whose job, as I understand it, is to take ordinary Americans, get them together to express what they believe, and express demands against the authorities. So it's unbelievably hypocritical. And, of course, as we just heard, this only happens when you have a conservative protest. It is called a mob. If it's a liberal protest, it is called grassroots expressing themselves. -- Charles Krauthammer
  • **Government does not solve problems... it subsidizes them! --Ronald Reagan
  • **When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President -- I'm beginning to believe it.’ - Clarence Darrow
  • **The liberals will give free medical care to illegal aliens who are on welfare but will deny it to American citizens who have worked all their lives and made their contributions to American society.-- Charles Hakes
  • ** Medicare is a huge, single-payer, government-run program. It ought to provide the perfect environment for experimentation. If more-efficient government management can slash health-care costs by addressing all these problems, why not start with Medicare? Let's see what "better management" looks like applied to Medicare before we roll it out to the rest of the country. -- Virginia Postrel
  • ** You can lead a man to Congress, but you can’t make him think. -- Milton Berle
  • **We do not see things as they are. We see them as we are. --The Talmud
  • **You can lead a man to Congress, but you can’t make him think. -- Milton Berle
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  • **I'd like to quote from an e-mail I recently received from a reader named J. Pyle. In response to a piece I had written ridiculing the state of higher education, he wrote: "I remember when 'Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Studies' meant trying to figure out what's wrong with those people. In fact, if your child is majoring in something that ends in 'Studies,' you better not turn their bedroom into a den, because that one is coming home after college." --Bert Prelutsky
  • **People are gushing over the late Michael Jackson. I suppose they will honor him on a postage stamp, in a new “Famous Child Molesters” series, to go with Elvis from the “Famous Drug Abusers” stamp series. Meanwhile, men and women dying to protect an America pass with little but perfunctory notice. One wonders, in the black hours of the night, if this nation deserves protecting. -- Robert Hall
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  • **"Even if the majority agrees on an idiotic idea, it is still an idiotic idea." Sam Levenson
  • **The most hilarious thing about the Democrats' attempt to engulf the health care industry in the inky blackness of the federal government is their primary selling point: that a government takeover will actually lead to reduced costs. How's that plan working out with Medicare so far? Oh yeah, it's on track to bankrupt the entire country. So let's expand that -- what could go wrong? Well, besides all the features that usually come along with socialized medicine: reduced quality of care, long wait times for operations, and allowing old people to die in order to cut costs. Obamacare would lead to health care with the compassion of the IRS, the competence of FEMA, and the well staffed work force of our border patrol at a much higher cost, but on the upside, you won't live as long, so you'll have less time to complain about it. -- John Hawkins
  • **President Obama wants greater transparency from businesses, banks, the government — everyone except the union movement. This clearly benefits the union leaders, who will become less accountable to their members. But it’s hardly the change Obama promised to bring to Washington. — James Sherk
  • **Being politically correct is, unfortunately, not the same thing as being correct politically.-- Bert Prelutsky
  • **If increased government spending with borrowed or newly created money is a "stimulus," then the Weimar Republic should have been stimulated to unprecedented prosperity, instead of runaway inflation and widespread economic desperation that ultimately brought Adolf Hitler to power. -- Thomas Sowell
  • **“The big mistake of Republican leadership is thinking that going through the motions of listening to their ‘base’ is the same thing as actually listening to the base. They keep trying to drag us to where they think we should be instead of joining us where we are.” -- John Hawkins
  • ** Torturing prisoners should never be our policy, both because it's immoral and because it's usually ineffective. But it's madness to declare that there can never be exceptions. Forget the argument about the "ticking bomb" and the terrorist who might have information that could save numerous lives. Let's make it personal. Whether you're left, right or in between, ask yourself this yes-or-no question: If torturing a known terrorist would save the life of the person you love most in the world, would you approve it? If your answer is "no," you're not a moral paragon. You're an abomination. And please make your position clear to your husband or wife, mother or father, son or daughter. Just tell 'em, "Sorry, honey, but I'd rather see you dead than mistreat a terrorist. It's a moral issue with me. --Ralph Peters
  • **The man who loves other countries as much as his own stands on a level with the man who loves other women as much as he loves his own wife. -- Teddy Roosevelt
  • **The prudent capitalist will never adventure his capital... if there exists a state of uncertainty as to whether the Government will repeal tomorrow what it has enacted today. -- William Henry Harrison
  • **The price of a postage stamp has gone up to 44 cents. The government says they had to raise the price because fewer people are using the mail these days. That's government thinking for you — "Hey nobody's buying our products . . . let's raise the price!" --Jay Leno
  • **If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand. -- Milton Friedman
  • **Since torture doesn’t work but waterboarding did work on KSM, doesn’t that prove that waterboarding isn’t torture?
  • **"The world is controlled by those who show up." --George Allen
  • **John Maynard Keynes, responded to a challenge about his changing views, saying, “When the facts change, I change my opinion. What do you do, sir?”