PEOPLE DEMANDED CHANGE AND IT'S COMING

By Craig R. Smith

Mar 26, 2009

The American people want change. The November election established the demand for change. It is just a question of what change we are going to get and if that change is good for our future.

After decades of borrowing, spending and consuming most Americans now want to produce, earn and save. However the current leadership in Washington wants the people to consume, borrow and spend our way out of the current financial trouble. And that's a formula history has established will not succeed.

Leadership throughout the last several decades has allowed an economy, built on innovation and production in the 20th century, to become an economy 66 percent based on consumption in the 21st century. Innovation today is finding wilder ways to get people to borrow and consume. To spend money on things, in many cases, they do not need.

Spending spurred by penniless consumers to create growth requires borrowing. The days of "earn now, buy later" have been replaced with just the opposite, all in the name of what is "best" for the economy. It is not what is best and the average American realizes it. Politicians do not. They are trained to spend money that is not theirs in the first place.

Many Americans are waking up to the reality that lavish lifestyles, lived on borrowed money, are just not worth the price.

Stress and financial pressures have outweighed the creature comforts or benefits found in trying to keep up with the Jones. Millions of good people are hooked on antidepressants from the stress. Children are drugged with Ritalin and video games to fill the void created by parents who are so busy paying the mortgage and credit bills they have little time to spend actually parenting.

So the day has finally come where America is just saying NO!

No to the monstrosity that mainly Democrats and a few ignorant Republicans have decided to cram down our throats in the form of a spending/stimulus bill shamefully laden with pork. It's a bill the Congressional Budget Office says will have very negative impact on the economy 4-5 years from now. If this was a quality bill, there would have been no need for pork to secure votes.

No to wasteful government spending and literally paying people not to work.

No to a government obsessed with growing until it controls every aspect of our lives from healthcare to housing, from paychecks to food stamps.

The people see that the government has lost it way and it is time for government to listen to the people, who desire a government limited to protecting, defending and preserving the Constitution. A government expecting personal responsibility from its citizens.

A government that believes in putting more of our hard-earned money into our hands through lower taxes. Money we can invest and save for the future. Money that will, in turn, spark the economy. Money that has not been borrowed.

For we the people are America. Not just Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Barak Obama. Not just Susan Collins, Arlen Specter and Olympia Snowe. All 300 million of us are America and together we can and will rebuild this country if the politicians would allow us to earn and spend our money and not force us to borrow.

A future not based on debt but hard work, savings and honesty. A future built by people who have learned to live within their means and demand the same from their government. A level of living that is the envy of the rest of the world.

We want change all right and now is the time to demand it and seize it. Now is the time to stop the government in taking us down the same old road of spend, spend, spend. Borrow, borrow, borrow.

I am a big believer that the American people are smarter than the politicians give them credit for. They have a knack for getting things right. They knew back in October and November the TARP would not fix the problems we faced. They were 72 percent against its passage. Politicians ignored the people, passed it anyway and it failed. No relief of "troubled assets" occurred. No citizens were helped.

This week Mr. Obama has force-fed us a bill 63 percent of us know is worthless. He used terms like "catastrophic," "never recover" and other phrases intended to scare people into a bill they know will fail. We were told the end of the world as we know it would occur in 2008. They are using the same language today. If this bill was sound, it would have required zero fear mongering. It would not have needed a prime time address.

The time of politicians listening to the will of the people has long passed. They are no longer our servants, they are our masters. Masters who demand we continue down the same road that has failed us for years.

What are we going to do about it?

As for me, I have decided to take hold of my future by preparing for very uncertain times. I live debt free. I live within my means. I don't have the biggest house in town. But I sleep well and know that when they screw things up even worse than they already have, I can pay my bills because I don't invest in their nonsense. I own land, gold, cash and a very small amount of stock.

I suggest you do the same.

I fully intend to expose and vote against everyone who voted for this foolish bill. Any member of Congress who voted for this bill should never be re-elected. They have blatantly disregarded the cries of the constituents who gave them their jobs. They may have ignored us once without a consequence but not twice.

Shame on whom this time?