By Seth Grossman, Political Columnist
?Do more than vote!? is the new slogan of LibertyAndProsperity.org. We adopted it at our most recent business meeting after months of discussion.
Every year, our public schools and countless ?public service? announcements praise everyone who votes as a good citizen.
But voting alone is not nearly enough to preserve our constitutional democracy. We have federal elections every even-numbered year, state government elections every odd-numbered year, and lots of county, local, and school elections almost every year. Most people vote in most of them.
So why does our federal government borrow 40 cents of every dollar it spends, if few voters run their households or businesses that way? Why do we bankrupt our state pension funds by letting thousands of state employees like Tom Gilbert ?retire? on $90,000 per year at age 52, and then re-hire them for new state jobs, in his case as ?commander? of the Atlantic City Tourism District for another $80,000 per year?
Spain ? like Greece, Italy, and Ireland ? is now so deeply in debt that many big banks in Europe will soon fail. Yet Spain, with a debt-to-GDP ratio of 68 percent, is still in better financial shape than the United States, which is now at 103 percent debt-to-GDP and getting worse every day.
Our federal government debt alone (not counting Social Security, Medicare, pension, or state government debts) stands at more than $15,800,000,000,000; that?s slightly more than the $15,462,000,000,000 worth of all goods and services produced in America each year.
How can anyone who votes for people who do this be called a good citizen?
Arthur Brooks of the American Enterprise Institute discussed three causes of this in a recent column in the Wall Street Journal called, ?America Already is Europe.?
First, he noted that the progressive left is now as strong here in America as it is in Europe. Because professor Woodrow Wilson and other progressives hijacked our public schools and elite universities 100 years ago, nearly half of Americans today believe more of the discredited lies of the ?Communist Manifesto of 1848, than the ?self-evident truths? of our Declaration of Independence of 1776.
Today their disciples in and out of government relentlessly demand and get more laws, more government, more taxes, and more debt. They falsely claim that this will make our society more equal and ?fair,? since only the ?rich? will pay for this. These progressives are so fanatical and intolerant that I can rarely disagree with them without being called bigoted, selfish, dishonest, or backward.
Second, most Democrats now support this progressive agenda of the left while most Republicans claim to support small government. Yet regardless of what is said during their campaigns, both parties in fact gave us bigger government, and more spending, borrowing, fees, and taxes after the election. This is because they both reward the folks who give them the campaign cash they need to win.
If Republican Gov. Christie really cut the budget of Democrat Jon Corzine, the previous New Jersey governor, by $11 billion, how can Christie?s budget today be $32 billion ? $4 billion higher than the last Corzine budget of $28 billion?
Third, most Americans still oppose the left on issues like failure to enforce immigration laws, endless free food stamps, 99-week unemployment, free housing, electricity, cell phones, etc. And they oppose the corporate welfare and bailouts of both parties. But they, including many who call themselves conservatives, are woefully uninformed on why this is happening and how to stop it.
Gallup recently reported that 81 percent of Americans are dissatisfied with the way our nation is being run. Rasmussen found that three fourths of Americans think our country is on the ?wrong track.?
But a recent survey found that only 25 percent of American adults could name both U.S. senators for their state, while 51 percent could name neither.
More Americans could identify Michael Jackson as the composer of “Beat It” than identify the Bill of Rights as a body of amendments to the Constitution.
More than 50 percent thought, “From each according to his ability to each according to his needs” was a quote from Thomas Paine, George Washington or President Obama. Those words were in fact said by Karl Marx, author of “The Communist Manifesto.”
It is still not too late to change things. But we must do a lot more than vote. Learn more at our website, www.libertyandprosperity.org. Or at breakfast at the Shore Diner in Egg Harbor Township any Saturday from 9:30 to 10:30 a.m. And please make a tax-deductible donation to keep our message on the radio.
(Reprinted from July 25, 2012 Current-Gazette Newspapers of Atlantic & Cape May Counties, http://www.shorenewstoday.com/snt/news/index.php/politics/27716-we-must-do-a-lot-more-than-vote.html)
Somers Point attorney Seth Grossman appears on 92.1FM 8-9 a.m. Saturday. For information see www.libertyandprosperity.org, email sethgrossman49@gmail.com or call (609) 927-7333. Breakfast discussions are held 9:30-10:30 a.m. every Saturday at the Shore Diner on Fire and Tilton roads in Egg Harbor Township.
(Image Source – http://12weekplan.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/more-than-vote_v2.png)