Uncommon Common Sense

You may or may not have heard that 30-year Republican Party member, Arlen Specter, changed parties today and became a Democrat. That's sortof ironic since most Republicans have felt he was parading around as a Democrat for most of his political life anyway. His move, makes him the new poster boy for everything that is wrong with politicians. He said, "I have found myself increasingly at odds with the Republican philosophy and more in line with the philosophy of the Democratic Party." That is the most honest thing he has said in years. The truth is however, that the said "increase" started 29 years ago, not recently. In fact, he said just a few short weeks ago that he would never leave the Republican party. Aside from that outright lie, it is important to understand why he really left the party. I lived in Pennsylvania for almost seven years, and it is largely a conservative state. But, as is true of many states, the conservative voters that dominate actual squar...

By the way, a friend of mine sent me this link. It's very enlightening, not long, and very worth your time. http://www.wimp.com/thegovernment/

I took my two children to a Tea Party last week, on April 15th. It was fun, it was enlightening and most of all it gave me hope for our country. There are a lot of people out there who still care. Unfortunately, I feel I must explain that I'm not against paying taxes. Some observers of the Tea Parties, which happened nationwide, have characterized the attendees as selfish, anti-tax, racist rednecks. I can only speak for the rally that I attended, but there was no racism. Period. The people that were there are frustrated and fed up with government policies on both sides of the aisle, regardless of whether the politicians are white, black, yellow or purple with polka-dots. It is condescending and dismissive to try and turn this into a race issue--that speaks of fear to address the real argument. I also didn't hear anyone saying that we should not be paying any taxes. What we want is the government to be careful with our money, treat it as if it were coming right out of their wall...

I really don't have any money to burn, but sometimes I would rather have the government burning my money than spending it. Over the last few months, we have witnessed a wholesale effort by the government to spend our way out of this recession. The problem is that government spending will accomplish little but increase our debt. "Government spending" is one of the vague phrases used frequently by the media as a blanket label. They include under that umbrella, defense spending, roads, research, welfare and pet projects to name just a few. Sadly however, far too few Americans understand 1)what government spending is and 2)where it comes from. If I could shout one thing from the rooftops to the American public and make them understand one principle, it would be the truth about government spending. The government does not spend one penny that they have not taken from our pockets. Let me restate that for emphasis: every penny spent by the government is taken away from American...