#OWS-Mayberry R.F.D.
We are occupied everywhere, not just on Wall Street or Los Angeles, Boston or Chicago. We’ve been occupied in our schools and universities, our public squares, our local governments, our professional organizations, and our daily lives by what seem like aliens who have taken over the country. I don’t recognize these people. They don’t seem like my countrymen. Boy, that sounds like paranoia, eh? But wait a minute. What do I mean?
Does anyone know what is the point of the “occupiers” on Wall Street? They don’t like fat cats? They don’t like billionaires? They don’t like millionaires? They don’t like businesses? They don’t like … tea partiers? They don’t like capitalism? What exactly about capitalism have these young, vocal occupiers ever experienced, I wonder. What possesses a young person to sit in front of buildings with signs and MAC laptops complaining about capitalism? Very curious indeed. But we are “occupied” with lots of these people. And what do they want? Sounds like they want more federal government occupation of the United States, and they sure as heck don’t want individual rights or individual economic success.
I recently helped organize a town hall in Gastonia for candidates from our tea party. All six of our council seats are up for grabs. And the mayor’s position is available, too. Sixteen candidates were in attendance for the town hall, where they fielded questions on our city debt, taking grants and subsidies with strings, having a financial gun held to our heads by planners to adopt Smart Growth, and consolidation with other unelected governance organizations. I discovered that the majority of candidates are not at all concerned about the federal government controlling our city budget with mandates. A few were aware of that, but several of them just said this is the way it is and we might as well get used to it: Occupied. By the federal government in small town U.S.A. We do have a few candidates who see the handwriting on the wall and are willing to step up and fight back. Just a few. And will they get elected? In an off year election? Who knows.
For me, the point of our town hall was to find out who the “occupiers” are and vote against them. Not just the incumbents, but also those “occupiers” running for the seats. This fight against “occupiers” is not just against the Federal government and the White House occupier, though that is a big part of it. This fight against “occupiers” is now in our hometowns. And hometowns are financially struggling, so “occupiers” promising buckets of money are not so rejected as you might like to think. American hometowns are for sale? To “occupiers”?
Some of you might remember Mayberry RFD. That T.V. series was fiction, but somewhat based on and in a little town in North Carolina called Mt. Airy. Mt. Airy sits at the top of our state in a rural area. And, guess what? Unelected planning boards and an unelected city manager are threatening the city to either build a greenway or …lose grants and subsidies from the state and the feds. In my hometown, probably much like yours, all of this advice comes through the city planning department and the city manager, too, all singing from the same songbook, about benefits of quality of life, about job creation, about smart growth. I provide the example of Mt. Airy because I want you to multiply Mt. Airy in your mind to every single small town, medium-sized city, and large megalopolis in the country. The song is always the same. Here’s how it played in Mt. Airy:
Commissioner Teresa Lewis also backed the plan, while responding to a comment by [Resource Institute official Charles] Anderson that if Mount Airy officials don’t accept the state funding, “someone else will.” As someone whose politics fall right of center, Lewis said she has problems with how big government operates and forces localities to play along in order to gain funding for worthy projects.
Worthy? Says who?
“We’re hearing here today that to play the game — and it’s really unfortunate and I don’t like it — is something we have to do.”
Who is she “hearing” that from?
City Manager Barbara Jones informed board members and audience members early on that the $2.2 million from the state won’t fund the entire cost of the connection. “We’re anticipating this project to be four-million plus,” Jones said of the total price tag for the work to link the Emily B. Taylor and Ararat River greenways.
Can Mt. Airy afford this greenway? No. But they are “occupied,” like the rest of us. Little Mt. Airy has to cough up $430,000 for the project. But their state taxes and my state taxes, along with yours, will be paying for it, too, an amount to exceed $4 million from the sounds of it.
So who is “occupying” America? It isn’t just a few thousand misled and indoctrinated college students camping out on Wall Street. It is the Federal and State governments camping out in your city’s planning department with bucketfuls of borrowed money. And it is the tragic capitulation of council members and commissioners who can’t seem to see the forest for the trees and realize what a fraud they are committing against the citizens in their towns by going along with this madness.
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Cheryl Pass writes at My Tea Party Chronicle.
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