Stop Pulling the Wagon

WE ARE FROM THE GOVERNMENT AND WE ARE HERE TO HELP YOU!

What kind of problems are you having that your government can help you with?

Did you make a mistake and register to vote in the “wrong” political party?  Let our Auditors with the IRS show you ways to get those political donations routed to the “right” party so there won’t be any unpleasant questions about your tax returns.

Did you “accidentally” attend one of those Pro-Constitution” public rallies?  Let our folks with the Justice Department do a little “background” checking for you to make sure you are not getting in with the “wrong” crowd.  They will be happy to visit with your family, neighbors and friends.  Anything they turn up will be held in strict confidence and only shared with other helpful government agencies.

Do you own a business and “forgot” to make a contribution to the political party in power?  Your friends from the Environmental Protection Agency will be pleased to visit your place of business to help you comply with all 60,000 pages of Regulations.  Including all the sub-paragraphs and addendums which you are responsible to comply with.  (Helpful hint: You might want to keep your checkbook nearby.)

Having trouble keeping healthy or maybe have a Body Mass Index that does not comply with current government guidelines?  The Health & Human Services Department under the powers granted by the Affordable Care Act, and with the assistance of the Internal Revenue Service, will be glad to review your eating and drinking choices. They will have available all the helpful data provided by your credit card companies and those popular “Club” and “Member Rewards” cards from your favorite stores, restaurants and “other” places of “indulgence”.  And, they will be supported by the Justice Department.

Now there is that pesky First Amendment to the Constitution which prohibits Congress from making any laws which infringe upon your rights of Freedom of Speech and Freedom of the Press.

But, of course they won’t be making any such laws.

The Government doesn’t need them.  After all, they are only here to help you!

Bob Bandy

It has been my philosophy to never give up trying.

There have been tough times in my life where my faith and the belief that God doesn’t so much want me to be willing to die for him as he wants me to live out his plan for me that has given me the grit to keep on trying, no matter the odds.

Like the frog with his hands around the throat of the stork.  I am feeling like that.

I love this country and feel blessed to have been born here and to have grown up in the years and times that I did.

Lately, I have become discouraged at the path that we, as a nation, are headed down.  I see a time coming all too soon that most everything I believe in will be gone.  Washed away in a Tsunami of national debt and dependency.  A form of institutionalized slavery for the great mass of sheeple.

We are going to need to build a fence around our borders, not to keep enemies out, but to keep productive citizens from escaping.  Looking for freedom and opportunity in another part of the world.

It isn’t that there are not hardworking, sincere and honest leaders and politicians trying their best to make things better.  There are.  The problem is the other 97%.

One of the most admired people in my life is both an attorney and a politician – and that is a sentence I never thought I would be able to write.  He is also a man of faith and, in my opinion, a kind of Don Quixote.  Armed with but a single lance in a forest of windmills.

Leaders like this man are vastly outnumbered.  One of a small percentage of dedicated men and women.  They face an overwhelming army of what I have characterized as clowns, lunatics and criminals, interested only in their own re-election and feeding their own egos.

Too few Don Quixote’s and too many windmills filled with the aristocracy from the dark side.

How do we fix anything with those kind of odds?

Is it time to just give up and start looking for a hole in the fence?   I’m beginning to wonder.

Bob Bandy

EVER WONDER WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO “YOUR” WORLD?

I have not written anything for a while.  In some ways I feel a little like Rip Van Winkle awakening from a long sleep wondering where I am and what has happened to the happy and ordered world I grew up in.

It seems to me that our lives are now ruled by a consortium of Clowns, Criminals and Lunatics.

A  journey through a looking glass into a world where the Lords of Darkness have stolen power and are creating a society where no good deed will go unpunished.

If the United States were the Milky Way Galaxy, then Washington D.C. would be the gravitational heart of that galaxy.

At the heart of  the Milky Way Galaxy there resides a Super-Massive Black Hole.  In space lingo a Black Hole is the collapsed heart of a large star that has compressed into a point where gravity is so intense that everything, including other stars and star stuff,  is sucked in and nothing of any recognized value, not even light, can escape.

Washington D.C. is like that.  A place where our tax dollars get sucked in and nothing of any value can possibly escape.

You know why?  Its because the Clowns, Criminals and Lunatics are busy stirring a big caulderon to turn our tax dollars into a system of Food  Stamps and Flat Screen TV’s to keep the masses complacent.

The Romans first introduced the concept of Bread and Circuses to keep the rabble quiet and content.  The Dark Lords in Washington have only copied them.

What?  Did you expect something creative and original to come out of Washington D.C. ?  Have you forgotten this is the place where 98% of our political leaders give the rest a bad name?

Bob Bandy

Feb. 2013

A KIND OF “WISH LIST”?

If I wanted to design the “perfect” place to live, and, if it did not matter how many folks I managed to infuriate and alienate in the process,  it would look something like this:

1. Government taxes at all levels could not exceed 10%.  I don’t think the government should ask for more than God does.  Everybody would pay the same rate of taxes.  The more you earn, the more you pay but the rate is the same.

2. Government would be forbidden budget deficits unless our nation faced invasion from a hostile foreign enemy.  At the time of this writing I cannot imagine a foreign government that would want to invade our country and assume our debt and problems.

3. All government services, except maybe national defense, would be put out to bid to private industry with specific performance requirements for payment and penalties for poor performance.  We might want to consider contracting out management of our national defense to Israel.

4. Those people and attorneys who file lawsuits and lose their case in court must pay the legal fees of the party they are suing.

5.  Convicted Felons:  First time offenders would spend their time in prison stateside in a cell watching and listening to endless re-runs of “Barney the Purple Dinosaur” (I love you, you love me etc.). Any time outside the cell would be in a physical labor environment (in pink jumpsuits).  Second time offenders would earn a trip to spend their time in a Mexican prison.  Three time losers would spend their prison terms in North Korea.  I am sure both Mexico and North Korea would be happy to provide the service at less than half what we taxpayers pay to maintain prisoners.  Surviving felons who commit a fourth offense will be parachuted into Taliban Country in Afghanistan armed with a Bible.

6. “Public” schools would be contracted and attendance based on parental choice of school.  Uniforms and discipline with specific requirements for advancement and graduation.  Students not compliant with specific disciplinary and learning requirements would be placed in alternative career/trade school or military “opportunity” environments.

7.  Those citizens with real, medically diagnosed, physical or mental illness would be provided basic needs which would include medical care.  Drug testing mandatory for all public assistance.

8. Both parents of a child are responsible for providing for the needs of the children they bring into the world.  Public assistance provided only with drug testing and mandatory work requirements.  No food stamp credit cards.  Food provided on the basis of basic dietary requirements.  Violation of the rules would terminate participation in any public program and removal of children to supervised foster care.  Parents who drop out of the program will receive mandatory parental training at the North Korean or Iranian  re-education camp of their choice.

9. All public officials must live under the same laws, regulations and programs (such as Social Security and Healthcare) that they impose on all other citizens.  No exceptions and no exemptions.

10. Public employees would work under specific work contracts with clearly defined and limited benefits including defined retirement (401k type) contribution plans.  No lifetime pension and health care benefits.

I think I will stop here as I have probably managed to anger and alienate enough people for one article.  Are those torches and pitchforks I see out in the street in front of my house?

Bob Bandy

Reprinted with only my closing comment. 

I received this via email with a request to share it.

With an apology to Aesop

Once upon a time there was a pleasant meadow in a lovely valley.

A colony of ants came to the meadow and saw that the land was good and with work would provide for a lovely place to live for them and their children.

They worked hard and put away food for the winter and cared for the land.

From a neighboring valley a tribe of locusts came to the land of the ants and decided to stay because the meadow was so pleasant and fertile.

The ants welcomed them in as neighbors and soon they all decided that they should form a government and each ant and locust would get an equal vote in the affairs of the meadow.

Some of the  locusts came to the ants and said they were poor and in need.  Being of kind heart the ants voted to share the fruits of their hard work with the locusts.

Being locusts, they did what locusts are prone to do, that is create lots of little locusts and sit in their burrows eating the food produced by the ants and watching their flat screen televisions paid for by the ants.

In time they discovered, as the little locusts grew up to vote, that they now outnumbered the ants and could vote themselves more and more of what the ants were working so hard to produce.

More and more locusts had baby locusts and invited their relatives and kin in from neighboring meadows.

One by one the ants figured out that they were doing all the work and the locusts were doing all the eating and loafing and watching television.

The ants decided that they did not want to continue to provide for an ever increasing number of locusts who did little to provide for themselves.

The ants packed up and left the now ravaged meadow and moved away to another meadow in another valley.

Winter came to the meadow of the abandoned locusts.  The locusts starved and froze because there was no longer any ants to provide for them what they refused to provide for themselves.

And the shadow of darkness fell over the formerly  pleasant meadow in the formerly lovely valley.

End of story.  If you are an ant you know the moral of the story.  If you are a locust you don’t care if there is a moral; you just want to know where the ants went.

Bob Bandy