Welcome to The Portage County Ohio TEA Party

 Oh, there has been so much outcry about that slimeball legislation that state legislators from both parties are now doing some maneuvering to cover their political butts and indicate that this law, oops, I mean “fee,” is going to be repealed.  You can be SURE that it will be replaced by another sleezeball fee.  Uh, lets see, can we tax the poor smokers even farther into the addiction poorhouse?  What really cracks me up is that politicians so often refer to these as “sin” taxes – as if most of them even have that word in their vocabulary any longer.

 Recently I was able to study lots of figures from hundreds of Portage County households receiving taxpayer-financed government assistance.  I believe in citizens helping fellow-citizens when somebody is going through tough times.  God knows, more Americans are walking some really rocky roads right now than have done so in many decades.  My total shock was  seeing the bottom-line reality of programs, which I must assume were designed (with good intentions) to be temporary helping-hand safety nets  -- having become lifelong prisons for the recipients.

Most of the recipients are single parent (primarily female) heads of households; some had a male partner; some had a spouse. Child dependents, most of the time, had many different last names.

So many things astounded me regarding the “up to now” end result of the GREAT SOCIETY program President Lyndon Johnson introduced, I think, over forty-five years ago.   MAYBE his intention was to build a broader base of Democrat voters.  I hope not – but Lyndon Baynes Johnson was a wheeler-dealer from Texas.  He is dust inside a coffin now, so who can know his heart.

I think SINCE the so-called Great Society was introduced as a Democrat mantra decades ago, many Democrat opportunists in Washington have taken advantage of the opportunity that a temporary need for help has presented in the last four-plus decades for constructing a VOTER BASE through increasing a dependence on the government for survival.

Back when LBJ first introduced his Great Society, most of the programs fell under the temporary helping hand welfare umbrella.  As the program grew (all government programs do), the “temporary” evolved into an entitlement, so the word welfare was dropped from the vocabulary.

A typical household may be getting $800 in food stamps, $900 in direct rent payment, and various vouchers and checks to cover medications, past due payments on utilities  and other needs, as well as clothing and additional food supplies from various county agencies.  I am glad that we are able to help people get back on their feet – but in most of these cases I was both amazed and saddened that none of these folks realized that ALL of these things were INCOME – and SOMEBODY had to paid for them and all of those dollars came out of SOMEBODY ELSE'S wallet.

In my mind, what our politicians – this is not a partisan issue because BOTH parties have played the same game – have done is criminal.  By creating an entitlement mentality through their decades of us-versus-them divisiveness, they have crippled America AND shrunk our future from one of dreams and goals to one of simply keeping afloat in the world.  Thanks to them, we are no longer the beacon of hope – either here at home or to those around the world. 

A combination of strangleholds on people at both ends of the society our politicians have created, have stifled any incentive to chase a goal or dream.    On one end of the spectrum a mass of recipients has been created which has no motivation  to do better or get out of a welfare ghetto that our government has created.  On the other end of that spectrum, entrepreneurs have been stifled through taxation and regulations from growing their dreams, expanding their goals or hiring more employees.

Our country is BROKE. That has not stopped Democrats or Republicans in Washington, Columbus and in our Ohio towns and cities from spending and trying to figure out new ways to tax those of us who still have anything left in our wallets or bank accounts to steal. 

What probably boggles my mind most is that there are still people  who think that WE – the TEA Party people, the 912 folks, the Ohio Liberty Council and other groups and people like Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck are the problem – for simply being honest enough to say that something is terribly wrong and we cannot go on like this.

As a nation and society, we are in deep doo-doo if we think we can “spend our way” out of economic depression. BANKRUPTCY LAWYERS thrive on this moronic logic with individuals.  WHY are our politicians dumb enough to conclude that the outcome will be any different when applied to the fate of a NATION? 

GOD help us, because we obviously are no longer capable of trusting our elected officials to help us. 

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