My Rant For The Day - I Don't Know What Else To Call It.

Written by Scott Cooper
September 21, 2011

So the front page of today’s WSJ says “Home Forecast calls for PAIN - Prices to stumble to 2015.”  Further into the article, “consumer spending stifled and more pushed into foreclosure.”

Hmmm.  Wasn’t it three years ago President Bush “Abandoned the free market in order to ‘save’ the free market?”  Here we are three years later, and we are considering more spending and more bailout – and we continue to push recovery into the future.

This weekend I had the pleasure of speaking with a woman who escaped Romania during the height of communism in that country.  The stories she told were gut wrenching – and can be read first hand in her book Echo’s of Communisim – Lessons from an American by Choice written by Dr. Ileana Johnson Paugh.  Today – Romania is freer than we are.  How sad is that?

Here are a couple thoughts:

1. Let’s never again try loaning money to people who can’t afford it. (pushed by the government since implantation of CRA and expansion of Freddie and Fannie).
2. Let’s encourage our citizens to spend only what they have money for – and stop using the equity of the roofs over our heads to purchase cars, boats and consumer merchandise that does not ever appreciate in value.  (Encouraged by President Bush after 9/11/01).
3. Let’s stop borrowing money from China and the Fed to give to states – to fund projects that should be paid for by the states to begin with.
4. Let’s elect local and state leaders who are tired of and will DEFEAT career politicians who see Federal Grants, not as a way for our republic get deeper in debt – but rather as a way to make them look good by brining money to our localities.  Money that is borrowed money that will end up enslaving us.
5. Let’s elect leaders who inspire us to be self-reliant and independent citizens – who encourage us to use our God given talents and abilities to take us as far as those talents and abilities can take us – vs. creating a dependency on Government and a fear of becoming “too successful” due to constant class warfare rhetoric. 
6. Let’s elect leaders who see private charity as the most cost effective, well run and compassionate charity that exists.  Individuals who are tired of government programs where bureaucrats earn 6 figure incomes implementing programs that fail – while private groups are accomplishing great things on shoe string budgets.  Private charities that employ people because they feel called to use their gifts and talents in those capacities – rather than occupy a desk simply for the six figure income, retirement and outrageously non-competitive compensation packages compared to private and non-profit workers. 
7. Let us pray for people within the bureaucracy to be bold and courageous – to stand up and say “enough is enough.”  Individuals who will say, “I am not going to purchase another thing – simply because it is the end of the fiscal year – and I am more concerned about my budget increase next year than I am about the well being of our republic.  I am not going to push a program that is failing simply because I am concerned about my retirement and benefits.  I won’t sit idly by any longer and watch my country go down the tubes – because I am primarily motivated by my self-interest.”

Our founders risked everything – their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor – because they believed in individual rights – not collective rights.  They believed in Freedom.  It is time for a new generation of Founders to rise up and say enough is enough. 

Inaction in this battle is indeed action.  It is action by default.  What action are you taking?