The beauty of books and radio, is that they stimulate the mind. I remember radio, and loved it. My Atwater Kent sat beside my bed, and I listened to drama, comedy, and history, with my mind picturing it all. Television is mind numbing, and leaves nothing to the imagination. It is mind crippling. I refuse to watch commercial TV, and when my kids were growing up, I wouldn’t let them watch it either. My kids turned out fine, and I am proud of them.
(Atwater Kent was a rich playboy from Philadelphia’s ’Main Line,’ (of the Pennsylvania Railroad between Philly and Chicago. Rich people took the train into the city, built huge mansions, and the area became called, the ’main line’). In the early 1920’s, Kent became fascinated with the new radio. He hired technicians to build the best possible radio, built a huge brick factory just off what is now Roosevelt Blvd. in Philly, and began making Atwater Kent radios. They were the best money could buy. Employees thought they might form a union, even though Kent was treating his employees royally. He told them that if they started a union, he would shut the whole thing down, and go back to paying tennis on his clay courts. They voted a union, and that was it for Atwater Kent radios. Everyone lost their job. Last time I looked, the building housed a bureaucracy of some sort. Doesn’t the name “Atwater” sound rich and snobby?)
When you read a book, and especially a novel such as Atlas Shrugged, which everyone should read, the mind visualizes the characters, scenery, and circumstances. I pity those who don’t read, and who are too young to know about radio. Their minds are really not fully developed, in my opinion. Getting back to the subject, picture a stagecoach. The stagecoach is being pulled by two horses. The stagecoach is red white and blue, and is America. It contains the gold of prosperity, headed for the fulfillment of the American Dream of plenty, freedom, prosperity, and happiness. Picture the horses, as those citizens who pull the stagecoach with their taxes, hard work, energy, and optimism. Suppose the stagecoach gradually picks up various people on its way. There was no good reason for the stagecoach to be loaded with all this extra weight, but it happened, and the horses (us) had no choice. Heavy people such as bureaucrats, welfare recipients, Congress, and other hangers on, which made it necessary to add more horses to pull the thing. More taxpayers, more workers, and more producers, are the horses added to pull this ever heavier load.
Got the picture so far? The stagecoach taking America to prosperity and fulfillment, has gradually gotten heavier and heavier, with worthless people and heavy taxes, which have no business on the stagecoach, because it makes it ever more difficult to pull and reach its goal. Slower and slower it goes, and more and more horses are added to pull the coach, till at last, it comes to a stop. All the horses can’t pull the coach. It’s too heavy!
All the weight which has been added to the coach, aren’t pulling. They’re merely making it ever more difficult to pull, and finally it can’t be pulled at all. Now, ask yourself the simple question of: Why are these weights on the stagecoach? Who put them there? Do they help pull? Or are they simple dead weight, pulling us all down, and making it impossible to make progress to our goal of prosperity and happiness?
Does any government entity, bureaucrat, tax, or regulation, show a profit? Us horses, who are pulling, show profits, and are taxed heavily. Our taxes, hard work and profits make America’s stagecoach go. It is our pulling, which makes America’s wagon move, and it’s gotten so heavy with dross, that we are having a devil of a time pulling. We are struggling to make a living, care for our families, and work hard to pull the wagon of America. Every day, month, and year, more and more weights are added to it. Weights which shouldn’t be there, because they slow us down, and have about stopped us dead. Every welfare check, food stamp, unemployment check, rent subsidy, public housing project, or subsidy of any kind, is weight added to us horses trying our best to pull America’s red, white and blue wagon. All this weight is supposedly to ’help’ those who need it, but that ’help,’ helps no one. It only makes them lazy. If someone can get $500 a week doing nothing, why should they get a job making $400 a week, with taxes taken out? ’Help’ used to come from churches and charities designed to help with volunteerism, not heavy taxes. People could volunteer to help those who they wanted to help, and were not forced to help those government said were to be helped. Hundreds of millions here and there, and all without our being able to say ’no.’ Obama and his entourage costs us $5 billion a year. Each member of the Senate or House costs us over $1.5 million. Billions are wasted, and those $1.5 million apiece have gotten us into wars, which we didn’t want or vote for.
It’s all gotten so out of hand, unconstitutional, stupid, expensive, restrictive, and yes, criminal, that the wagon needs to be emptied. Let’s do it in November! This is the last column till at least September 9th, since the cruise ship we are going to Alaska on, docks in Seattle on Labor Day. Meantime choir, enjoy the rest of August, and have a great Labor Day. It’s our labor, which keeps the coach moving!