Political Place 11/7/2013

The views and opinions expressed in Political Place do not necessarily reflect the views of the Sun Day or its staff. The section is meant to offer readers a chance to express their thoughts on political issues.

In Jim Nelson’s recent letter, he expresses the need for carriers of concealed weapons to protect themselves from the government. The government? I think we should be more concerned about protecting ourselves from all the irresponsible, disturbed, irrational, and hostile people carrying devices in public that can kill you with a movement of their index finger.
Case in point: This is a direct quote from a recent post on the Huntley Patch: “I see the perfect storm coming…people finding out what is really in the ACA bill, and concealed carry OK by January 1. I hope you have Obama stickers on your cars, so I can identify you.” The sad thing is that in our violent society, where accidental and random killings are the new norm, this doesn’t sound so far-fetched.
That’s why I say no concealed carry until we figure out how to:
·Regulate firearms at least as carefully and uniformly as we do cars. We wouldn’t want to live in a place where cars can go down the wrong lane of the highway at 120 mph because some people are paranoid about government regulation, right? I am not saying you shouldn’t own a gun. I’m just saying if you want to operate a device that can kill people in an instant, you should be willing to submit to the same regulations as you do when you operate a machine that can take lives with the turn of a steering wheel. Every gun should be registered in each state it travels to. Every gun purchase should come with mandatory liability insurance.
·Create a system to perform background checks even for private gun and ammunition sales as well as a more comprehensive database of people barred from owning guns.
-Outlaw large-capacity magazines and flag customers who buy large amounts of ammo.
·Ban assault-style weapons because nobody who isn’t in the military or on the police force needs an AK-47 or an AR-15 to hunt deer or protect their families.
·Keep guns out of the hands of mentally ill people. Therapists, doctors, and other mental health professionals should be required to tell state authorities if a patient threatens to use a gun illegally.
Sadly, we’ve got a long way to go until we figure these things out, not to mention the political battles. Until then, please leave your guns at home.
Jess Chipkin
Sun City resident
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We keep hearing that Social Security will be broke by a certain date. It is all bogus, it started out broke. The president who introduced it and got it passed did it so the government would have a steady cash flow from the paychecks of employees and their employers. He pretended, as all presidents since then, that he was borrowing the money by selling them government bonds. Sure he put IOU’s in a file and called them bonds, but a provision of those special bonds was they could not be sold to anyone but the insurer.
How ridiculous is that? Either it is a bond or it isn’t and these are not bonds. None have ever been redeemed, and if they ever were, it would be with new taxpayer money, and we all know the congress has allowed the presidents to spend all that along with the new Social Security money, so the new bonds join the old and neither the old nor the new are worth spit.
My earlier claim that Social Security is a giant Ponzi scheme. New money coming in pays benefits to those whose money was used for some other purpose all along. If I did this, I’d be in jail in less than a year, but the government has been doing this since 1936 and will keep it up until the public finds representatives who will do what they swore they’d do when they were elected. We will not hold our breath. Those who vote for a living now outnumber those who work for a living and the Giant Ponzi scheme continues.
Did anyone else notice that when the government was closed down, the president said the retirees might not get their money, but he never said there wouldn’t be money for all the welfare programs? His goal was to inflict the most pain on those who probably did not vote for the Democrats.
Wilton Jere Tidwell
Sun City resident
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Progressive policy failures
Progressive ideologues would have us believe that anyone who would oppose government policies that promise “the elimination of hunger” should be called out as unconcerned about hunger and poverty in this country. Here is the indisputable fact: hunger and poverty have not been – and will not be – eliminated regardless of all the promises or supposed good intentions of those politicians who support only more government growth and control over the lives of Americans.
Since the passage of the “Economic Opportunity Act” in 1964, the “war on poverty” has mainly brought us five decades of more government growth, more policies and programs, more restrictive regulations, more people added to those poverty rolls, and more wasteful and corrupt spending. Many of these duplicative and overlapping programs can be combined or reduced for efficiency, or even eliminated as being ineffective, fiscally irresponsible or morally degenerative, all leading to further decline of our society.
Raising the federal minimum wage is not the answer. “According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, fewer than three percent of U.S. workers earn the minimum wage. Those tend to be entry-level workers; people with little work history, less education and fewer skills than those who earn more; therefore most cannot compete with the rest of the labor market in terms of skills, education or experience. As a result, they make less money.”
America is waking up from progressives’ wishful dreaming, and facing the reality that more government programs, more central control, and more spending will only continue to restrain the restoration and vitality of our historically successful free market and the overall economy while also diminishing our quality of life. “Just 13 percent of likely U.S. voters now say the country is heading in the right direction, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey for the week ending Oct. 13. That’s down from 17 percent the week before.”
Our elected officials are sent to their respective government offices as our representatives to do what’s right for America and to oppose what’s not. We the people should support them when they do their job.
Jim Nelson
Neighborhood 28
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As a person who did not vote for President Barack Obama at the last election, I have uncovered some alarming facts about him.  He is not African-American but Chinese — his blackness is all makeup. He purchased a million dollar diamond necklace for his wife Michelle by selling the Lincoln bed in the White House. He is Muslim and is secretly hiding five wives in Chicago. All of his cabinet members are card-carrying communists. He is currently trying to resell Alaska to the Russians and pocketing the money. ObamaCare has a passage that not only do illegal aliens get free health care, they receive a $500 check every time they go the hospital or doctor. He has passed a law that only Democrats can vote in the next election.
Oh! By the way, only part the above is true, I did not vote for President Obama. After reading in the Sun Day newspaper “politicalplace” section a person stated that only 8 percent of Barack Obama’s cabinet had ever held private sector jobs. I researched it. After checking the background of each cabinet member, I found it was a totally false claim. When I e-mailed the editor that this was blatantly false and gave him references, he stated he knew it before they printed it but, “We retain editorial control and the responsibility to tell the truth in content created by our reporters and columnists, but our readers writing in are not held to our standards.” It is a sad day when truth is held in such low esteem. So readers, beware of the claims you read in the politicalplace section and various outlandish e-mails. Research the facts. Just because you read something and want to believe it, doesn’t make it true.
John Scott
Sun City resident
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A few weeks ago, a reader submitted a letter saying only 8 percent of President Obama’s Cabinet had private business sector experience. This sounded a little hard to believe, so I checked it out. It took less than 60 seconds to confirm my suspicions that this was, indeed, another bad political myth being recycled by Glen Beck and others.
Go to Politfact and check it out for yourself. Or, even better, just put “8 percent of Obama’s cabinet private sector experience” in your Google search bar. You will see right away that not only is the eight percent figure astoundingly in error,  you’ll also find that among a larger group of Obama’s administration appointments, 77 percent show private sector experience.
Once again, Glenn Beck and his believers have shown us that they will never let the truth interfere with a chance to bash the President.
Jess Chipkin
N. 22
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Elections have consequences
When Mr. Obama was elected he had two years of both houses of the legislature. He rammed through programs and laws with only democrat votes. He said, “elections have consequences” and that was the Democrat mantra on every occasion, on talk shows, and especially on the mainstream media outlets.
The people in over half of the country were so upset they sent a Tea Party person to the house in numbers so large the Republicans are the majority. When Democrats win an election, the media reports that the Democrats have “won,” but when conservatives win an election, the media reports that they have “taken over” the congress.
It is a subtle difference, but it says that the Republicans have done something wrong, when they just won an election.
The midterm election sent so many new Tea Party people to the house that they became the majority. The progressives were so incensed that they started with a new mantra. “Cooperation, cooperation, cooperation” was all you heard. What they really wanted was Republicans to agree with them. Well, elections do have consequences, and the Republicans won the house, and if the senators had not railroaded the 17th Amendment to the Constitution, though, we’d have a Republican senate. Before the 17th Amendment, governors or state legislatures appointed senators and recalled them when their party lost an election.
I believe the Republicans will win the senate in 2014 as a consequence of the debacle called The Affordable Health Care Act. It was ill conceived, rammed through without any votes from the Republicans, and instituted worse than any roll out in history. It has been described, even by the Democrats who are up for re-election, as a “train wreck.” No wonder this administration cannot govern; they have the lowest percent of business people of any administration in history, at eight percent. People who have only worked in government and academia don’t have the discipline or know how of business people. We have three more years of this inept crew before we can get some relief from this nightmare. Let’s hope that enough people still want to work so we are not stuck with more citizens who want to vote for a living, instead of working for a living.
Wilton Jere Tidwell
Sun City resident

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