Dangerous Times as Government Grows

Mary Laney at The Chicago Daily Observer reports:

These are dangerous times we’re living in. Dangerous times for Americans who want to keep their inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Government is growing at an alarming rate and paying itself hefty salaries.

In Grover Norquist’s book, Leave Us Alone, he writes:

“In 2004, the average wage-and-benefit package for a private-sector worker was $51,876. The average federal worker earned $100,178 in wages and benefits. (For wages alone, private sector workers earned $42,635 and federal employees took home $66,589.) Total wages and benefits see federal workers taking in almost twice as much each year.” Besides the wage disparities, government leaders are telling us, the private citizens, what we can do, when we can do it, and what we have to give up.

If we sell our homes, we now have to pay our local government a sales tax on the sale. If we own a car, besides a license and insurance, we have to pay our city for a sticker. If we go to a movie, a theatre, a sports event, a restaurant, a hotel, or take an airplane, we have to pay taxes to the government. There are growing taxes and fees on our phones, cell phones, gasoline, heating fuel, electricity, water, cable television, and everything we need to buy.

We’ve been told we can’t have a gun in our home to protect ourselves, can’t put fences in our yards above a certain height, have to pay a fee to construct a fence, have to pay thousands to get a permit to build swimming pools in our yards, and have to pay growing property taxes to pay for the now exorbitant salaries for school administrators. (If you don’t think their salaries are high, a friend recently told me that his wife, a teacher for fourteen years, was made an assistant superintendent her last year and retired with the equivalent of a $2 million annuity). And your tax dollars are paying for it.

Now the government is talking about cashing in on private industry profits.

We’re hearing a lot of politicians talk about raising taxes on windfall profits and spreading the money around to those who need it. Their talk might sound good to a lot of people, until people begin to look at what such a move means to their investments and pensions. It would mean they’d get a lot less than they thought they would – with the money going from their pensions to people who the government decides need it more. To me, that is socialism. Marxism. I prefer living in a democracy, a republic that is a government by the people, for the people and of the people. I prefer living in a nation where people have the freedom to work, earn a living, and leave something to their children.

If government wants to get into the business of taxing windfall profits, why doesn’t it look at the Teachers Union, the largest in the nation? That Union has money to give untold thousands of dollars to political candidates and funding to a political party. Why doesn’t the government ask the Teachers Union to instead put that money into the schools it says need more money? Elected officials complain that some schools have more money than others. That’s because schools are funded with the property taxes paid by the residents in their areas. Where there are higher property taxes, there are better schools. It’s not a good plan, but it’s the way the government leaders have set it up. Our property taxes are also paying the teachers’ salaries and the superintendents, assistant superintendents, deputy superintendents and support staffs.

Government has been growing at an alarming rate, both nationally, state wide, countywide and citywide.

We’re now working for and paying the government rather than the government working for us. It’s time for Americans to wake up and demand their rights—a full accounting of all government jobs, contracts and expenditures. It’s our right.

These are dangerous times we’re living in.