Tag Archives: Big Government

Withdraw Your Own Money? 15 Months in Jail.

by Annie | Leave a comment

The government stopped printing bills larger than $100 in 1945 and hasn't issued any since 1969. This one was found in a safe deposit box. It features Lincoln's Treasury Secretary, Salmon P. Chase, and is kept in the New York corporate office of the bank that bears his name.

The government stopped printing bills larger than $100 in 1945 and hasn’t issued any since 1969. This one was found in a safe deposit box. It features Lincoln’s Treasury Secretary, Salmon P. Chase, and is kept in the New York corporate office of the bank that bears his name.

I could not agree more with this article from The American Thinker. It was brave and needed to be said.

Enjoy.

The Troubling Prosecution of Dennis Hastert
April 29, 2016 By Michael Filozof

I don’t like Dennis Hastert. During his tenure as Speaker of the House, my attitude toward him was, more or less, “Meh.” Hastert is undoubtedly the pervert and sexual predator he is accused of being – he admitted so in court. In all probability, he got exactly what he deserved when he was sentenced to prison Wednesday.

That being said, I am troubled by the way Hastert was prosecuted. It seems to me that the government targeted Hastert because he was a prominent politician and, in so doing, threw the constitutional rights of criminal defendants out the window.

Hastert was accused of numerous incidents of homosexual contact with teenage boys over forty years ago, when he was a high school wrestling coach in Illinois. Hastert was never charged with those alleged crimes, because the statute of limitations for prosecuting him expired.

Hastert was instead indicted for violating federal banking law when he tried to pay one individual to keep quiet about the alleged abuse. The crime of “structuring” is utterly bizarre: if you take $10,000 cash out of your own bank account, the bank must report it to the federal government. If, however, you take $9,999 out, you will be accused of “structuring” the transaction to avoid the $10,000 reporting requirement.

In other words, the $10,000 number for reporting to the government that you took your own cash out of your own bank account isn’t really the true number at all; whenever the government thinks you are “structuring” by taking out less, they will nail you for that anyway. It’s like getting a ticket from a cop for driving below the speed limit because you were trying to avoid a speeding ticket. It’s one of the most questionable prosecutions I’ve ever heard of.

But at Hastert’s sentencing, both the federal prosecutor and the judge made clear that the case was really about the sexual allegations, not the banking issue. Hastert was sentenced to fifteen months – more than double the six months recommended by federal sentencing guidelines. U.S. district judge Thomas Durkin called Hastert “a ‘serial child molester,’ and ignor[ed] the defense’s request for no prison time. ‘Some conduct is unforgivable no matter how old it is,’ Durkin told Hastert in a lengthy statement at the sentencing.”

The judge’s statement constitutes a serious problem in my view. Child molestation is not a federal crime; it’s a state-level crime. Judge Durkin had no business sentencing Hastert in federal court for state-level crimes for which the Illinois statute of limitations had expired and for which Hastert never stood trial. But that’s essentially what he did.

The accuser whom Hastert was trying to pay off remained anonymous. Why? In court documents, he is known as “Individual A.” Individual A received over a million dollars from Hastert. Did he pay income taxes on the money? Did he report the cash payments he received in excess of $10,000 to the government? If not, shouldn’t he be charged with tax evasion and failure to report cash transactions? What about blackmail? (In yet another strange twist, the Associated Press reports that “on Monday, Individual A filed a lawsuit saying he’s been paid only about half of the money and is still owed $1.8 million.”)

Other accusers who had not been paid off stepped forward at the sentencing – including the sister of a man who died from AIDS 21 years ago in 1995. “Stephen Reinboldt was named by prosecutors, who cited his sister, Jolene Burdge[.] … She told prosecutors Reinboldt’s first homosexual experience was with Hastert[.]” Is Burdge accusing Hastert of “turning” her brother gay? (I thought the gay lobby tells us we’re “born that way.”)

Even if Burdge’s allegations are true – which cannot be proven – what do they have to do with a sentencing in a federal banking case? Shouldn’t the judge have thrown out such hearsay? And doesn’t the testimony of relatives of long-dead “accusers” violate the Sixth Amendment’s right of a defendant to “be confronted with the witnesses against him”?

This whole matter stinks to high heaven. It’s pretty clear that the prosecution targeted Hastert because of his political status as a high-ranking Republican. Hastert may well have deserved it – and indeed, he cooperated with the prosecution by pleading guilty.

But the fact remains that other politicians – liberals, gays, and Democrats – have avoided criminal prosecution, while the feds threw the book at Hastert for things they didn’t even really have jurisdiction over. Democratic rep. Gerry Studds had a homosexual relationship with a 17-year-old boy in 1983. He was censured by the House but subsequently re-elected and regarded as a gay icon for being the first openly gay congressman. Openly gay Democrat Barney Frank lived with a gay prostitute in the 1980s and was reprimanded by the House. He, too, was re-elected and regarded as a gay pioneer.

Why didn’t federal prosecutors pursue Studds and Frank on flimsy unrelated charges? Why hasn’t Hillary Clinton been charged with mishandling classified information, like Gen. David Petraeus – or sent to prison, like Bradley (ahem – “Chelsea”) Manning? Why did Sen. Ted Kennedy get no jail time for killing Mary Jo Kopechne while driving drunk at Chappaquiddick – while Hastert will do fifteen months for withdrawing his own money from his own bank account? And what about the rape allegations against Bill Clinton?

The answer is clear: the criminal justice system isn’t neutral; it’s politicized. Back in the 1950s and 1960s, when the left was the counterculture, leftists were quite concerned with the criminal defense of Communists, hippies, draft evaders, pornographers, gays, civil rights marchers, and the like. Today, the left is politically ascendant and all too happy to stand idly by or be complicit in the prosecution of its Republican and conservative political opponents – e.g., Scooter Libby, Tom Delay, Rick Perry, and Dinesh D’Souza. Legions of liberal lawyers are willing to defend minority drug dealers and murderers – was none of them willing to question the prosecution of Hastert? Why did the gay lobby not speak out on his behalf?

The Constitution requires that the government must prosecute people fairly and abide by the letter and the intent of the law. That means that sometimes, people who morally deserve punishment will legally get off without it (such as O.J. Simpson).

Hastert is unquestionably a bad guy to defend. But the object here isn’t to defend Hastert; it’s to criticize the government. In the Hastert case, the government seems to have railroaded a guilty man. But if they can railroad Hastert, they can railroad anybody – including you and me.

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OWS Rap Sheet – WOW

by Annie | Leave a comment

Gotta love that rumpled rapscallion Breitbart, donthca?  If for no other reason than he makes smoke come out of the ears of rabid lefties.

LOOK at this list (below) of Tea Part… I mean OWS malfeasance (Because we all know, Tea Party illegal activity = ZERO).

Huge, huge props to Big Government’s John Nolte for compiling it and who wants you to email him with any OWS malfeasance in your town:  jnolte@breitbart.com.

  1. NY: 10/1/2011 — Police Arrest More Than 700 Protesters on Brooklyn Bridge [4]
  2. Madison, WI: 10-27-2011 — Madison Occupiers Lose Permit Due to Public Masturbation [5]
  3. Phoenix: 10/28/2011 — Flier at Occupy Phoenix Asks, “When Should You Shoot a Cop?” [6]
  4. NY: 10/18/2011 — Thieves Preying on Fellow Protesters [7]
  5. NY: 10/9/2011 — Stinking up Wall Street: Protesters Accused of Living in Filth as Shocking Pictures Show One Demonstrator Defecating on a POLICE CAR [8]
  6. NY: 10/7/2011 — Occupiers Rush Police [9] … More [9]
  7. Cleveland: 10/18/2011 —  ‘Occupy Cleveland’ Protester Alleges She Was Raped [10]
  8. NY: 10/10/2011 — ‘Increasingly Debauched’: Are Sex, Drugs & Poor Sanitation Eclipsing Occupy Wall Street? [11]
  9. Seattle: 10/18/2011 — Man Accused of Exposing Self to Children Arrested [12]
  10. 10/12/2011 — Iran Supports ‘Occupy Wall Street’ [13]
  11. Portland: 10/16/2011 – #OccupyPortland Protester Desecrates Memorial To U.S. War Dead [14]
  12. Portland: 10/15/2011 — #OccupyPortland Protesters Sing “F*** The USA” [15]
  13. Chicago: 10/17/2011 — COMMUNIST LEADER Cheered at Occupy Chicago [16]
  14. 10/15/2011 — American Nazi Party Endorses Occupy Wall Street‘s ’Courage,‘ Tells Members to Support Protests and Fight ’Judeo-Capitalist Banksters’ [17]
  15. Boston: 10/14/2011 — Coast Guard member spit on near Occupy Boston tents [18]
  16. Boston: 10/11/2011 — Boston Police Arrest Over 100 from Occupy Boston [19]
  17. New York: 10/11/2011 — “You Can Have Sex with Animals.” [20]
  18. New York: 10/15/2011 — Harassing Police with Accusations of Phony Injuries [21]
  19. New York: 10/9/2011 –  ‘Occupy Wallstreet’ Protesters Steal from Local Businesses [22]
  20. New York: 10/25/2011 — Three Men Threatened to Kill 24-Year-Old Occupy Wall Street Protester for Reporting Rape[23]
  21. Baltimore:  10/18/2011 — #OccupyBaltimore Discourages Sexual Assault Victims from Contacting Police [24]
  22. Portland: 10/27/2011 — Occupy Portland’s Attempt At Wealth Redistribution Ends In Theft [25]
  23. Los Angeles: 10/14/2011 – Anti-Semitic Protester at Occupy Wall Street [26]
  24. 10/27/2011 — A Death Threat From an Occupy Wall Street Protester [27]
  25. 10/27/2011 – Anti-Semitic Tweet From Occupier or Sympathizer [28]
  26. Boston: 10/20/2011 — Occupy Boston Doesn’t Want Police Involved in Rape [29]
  27. New York:  10/5/2011: Anti-Semitic Occupier Screams About Jews, Israel [30]
  28. New York: 10/4/2011 — Occupier Taunts Jewish Man [31]
  29. Boston: 10/2011 — Occupiers Block Street [32]
  30. New York: 10/2011 — Occupier Tries to Steal Police Officer’s Gun [33]
  31. New York: 10/27/2011 — Occupiers Block Traffic [34], Get Arrested
  32. Oakland: 10/27/2011 — Occupiers Throw Garbage at Police [35]
  33. Oakland:  10/19/2011 — Abusive #OccupyOakland Protesters Ban Media from Tent City [36]
  34. Eugene, OR: 10/19/2011 — Occupiers Displace Farmers’ Market Threatening Hundreds of Jobs [37]
  35. Portland, OR:  10/18/2011 — Capitalist Offering Jobs at Occupy Portland Finds Few Takers [38]
  36. NY:  10/20/2011 — #OccupyWallStreet Threatens Businesses, Patrons [39]
  37. NY: 10/14/2011 — Violence Breaks Out During #OccupyWallStreet March Toward Stock Exchange [40]
  38. NY: 10/14/2011 — Protesters March On Wall Street, Scuffle With Cops [41]
  39. Oakland: 10/19/2011 — #OccupyOakland Protesters Threaten Reporter [42]
  40. Oakland: 10/26/2011 — Occupiers Scuffle with Police [43]
  41. Oakland: 10/24/2011 — Protesters Storm, Vandalize, Shut Down Chase Bank [44]
  42. Dayton, OH: 10/22/2011 — Protester: ‘F*ck The Military, F*ck Your Flag, And F*ck The Police’ [45]
  43. Chicago: 10/14/2011 –  Protesters’ Message At #OccupyChicago Rally: ‘Destroy Israel’ [46]
  44. NY: 10/23/2011 — #OccupyWallStreet Supporter Rants Against Israel, Jews [47]
  45. NY: 10/22/2011 — #Occupy Kid: ‘Burn Wall Street, Burn!’ [48]
  46. NY: 10/21/2011 — New Yorkers Fed Up With Noisy, Defecating Protesters [49]
  47. Oakland:  10/21/2011 — Occupy Oakland Evicted After Reports Of Crime And Intimidation [50]
  48. Oakland: 10/19/2011 — #OccupyOakland Out of Control: Rats, Graffiti, Vandalism, Sexual Harassment, Public Sex and Urination [51]
  49. Chicago: 10/26/2011 –  Occupiers Under Investigation by FBI for Links to Terrorism [52]
  50. Cleveland: 10/29/2011 — Rape Reported at Occupy Cleveland [53]
  51. Dallas: 10/24/2011 — Police Investigating Possible Sexual Assault Of Teen At Occupy Dallas [54]
  52. Bloomington, IN: 10/26/2011 — Man Claims Occupy Bloomington Protesters Drugged, Handcuffed Him [55]
  53. NY: 10/10/2011 — Sex, Drugs and Hiding from the Law at Wall Street Protests [56]
  54. Glasgow: 10/26/2011 — Woman Gang-Raped [57]
  55. Boston: 10/23/2011 — Occupy Boston Protesters Arrested For Dealing Heroin – With 6 Year-Old in Tent [58]
  56. Portland: 10/16/2011 –  Sex Offender Registers Occupy Portland Camp as Address [59]
  57. Denver: 10/15/2011 — Occupy Denver Demonstrator Accused of Groping TV Photographer [60]
  58. Lawrence, KS: 10/25/2011 — Sexual Assault Reported at Occupy Camp [61]
  59. Minneapolis, MN:  Bricks, Rocks, ‘Riot Supplies’ Discovered by Police [62]
  60. Phoenix, AZ:  10/27/2011 — Neo-Nazis Patrol “Occupy Phoenix” With AR-15′s [63]
  61. Chicago: 10/26/2011 — Occupy Chicago Invades City Hall [64]
  62. 10/26/2011 — ACORN, Occupy Email Talks About Assault on Banks [65]
  63. 10/26/2011 –  OccupyWallStreet Strategy for Reports of Violence Against Cops [66]
  64. Chicago: 10/26/2011 — Unrepentant Domestic Terrorist Bill Ayers Wows Occupiers [67]
  65. Chicago:  10/25/2011 — Ayers Coaches  #OccupyChicago, Callsg for School ‘Occupations’ [68]
  66. 10/26/2011/ — Occupy Protests Have Jewish Leaders Concerned [69]
  67. Wash DC: 10/27/2011 –  OccupyDC Leftists Provoke Police – Hang Flag on Top of DC Statue [70]
  68. Albuquerque, NM:  10/26/2011 — Occupy Squatters Riot With Police [71]
  69. San Diego: 10/25/2011 — Flag Used as Chew Toy by Occupier’s Dog [72]
  70. Oakland: 10/25/2011 — Occupiers Throw Bottles at Police [73]
  71. NY: 10/27/2011 — Occupy Wall Street Protesters: Rush Limbaugh Is Bigger Threat Than Al-Qaeda [74]
  72. 10/27/2011 — Occupy Wall Street Launching First Nationwide General Strike in America Since 1946 [75]
  73. NY: 10/28/2011 — Fox 5 News Reporter Assaulted at OWS [76]
  74. 10/28/2001 — Total Occupy Arrests Made Thus Far: 2750 [77]
  75. Nashville: 10/28/2011 — 30 Arrests Made at Wall St. Protest [78]
  76. NY: 10/20/2011 — Former Marine Tries to Taunt Police into Violence [79]
  77. NY: 1023/2011 — Islamist Group Joins with Occupy Wall Street [80]
  78. Los Angeles:  10/13/2011 — Roundup of Overt Occupy anti-Semitism [81]
  79. NY: 10/12/2011 — There are No Anti-Semites at Occupy Wall Street. Except for This Guy [82]
  80. Missoula, MT: 10/20/2011 — Drunk 11-Year-Old At Occupy Missoula, Adult Arrested [83]
  81. Oakland: 10/28/2011 — Bounty Out On Police Officer? [84]
  82. Manchester, NH: 10/28/2011 – Woman charged with pimping teen recruited at Occupy NH rally [85]
  83. San Diego: 10/28/2011 – 40 Occupiers arrested [86]
  84. Boston: 10/24/2011 — Occupy Boston Vandalism of Banks [87]
  85. Boston: 10/25/2011 – Store Owner Suffers 4 Break Ins Since Occupy Boston Began [88]
  86. Portland: 10/28/2011 — Portland Police: Buckets of Excrement Scattered Around #OccupyPortland Camp [89]
  87. Seattle: 10/20/2011 — Two Possible Occupiers Charged With Assault [90]
  88. Seattle: 10/18/2011 — Armed Felon Arrested at Occupy Seattle [91]
  89. Seattle: 10/18/2011 — A Tent Fight and (At Least) One Arrest at Occupy Seattle [92]
  90. Seattle: 10/17/2011 — Over 50 Cops Clear Westlake Occupation, Make Eight Arrests [93]
  91. Seattle: 10/13/2011 — Cops Arrest Several Occupy Protesters [94]
  92. Seattle: 10/13/2011 — Chanting Protesters Surround Police After Officers Arrest Two [95]
  93. Denver: 10/29/2011 — Protesters Clash with Police at OWS Denver [96]
  94. Austin: 10/13/2011 – Occupy Austin protesters arrested for blocking cleaning Crews [97]
  95. Calgary, CN: 10/28/2011 — Occupiers do $40,000 in Property Damage [98]
  96. Cincinnati, OH: 10/21/2011 — 23 Arrested, Remains of  protests fill two dumpsters [99]
  97. Sacramento: 10/19/2011 – 9 arrested in ‘Occupy Sacramento’ protest [100]
  98. Sacramento: 10/13/2011 – Four More Occupy Sacramento Demonstrators Arrested [101]
  99. Austin, TX: 10/22/2011 – Man Arrested After Knife Incident at Occupy Austin Camp [102]
  100. Nashville: 10/29/2011 — Tenn. Protesters Arrested For 2nd Straight Night [103]

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Unions, Thrift, P*ssed-off Octogenarians… Nothing much has changed…

by Annie | Leave a comment

This is long, but it’s worth it.  It’s an eye witness to the Great Depression venting about what he views as the cause of it.  It’s classic crusty New England… so I love it.  The guy sounds just like my father does today… Who, as it happens… is also 80 years old. 
God Bless them both.

“…Life histories were compiled and transcribed by the staff of the Folklore Project of the Federal Writers’ Project for the U.S. Works Progress (later Work Projects) Administration (WPA) from 1936-1940. The Library of Congress collection includes 2,900 documents representing the work of over 300 writers from 24 states. Typically 2,000-15,000 words in length, the documents consist of drafts and revisions, varying in form from narrative to dialogue to report to case history. The histories describe the informant’s family education, income, occupation, political views, religion and mores, medical needs, diet and miscellaneous observations. Pseudonyms are often substituted for individuals and places named in the narrative texts.”
The United States Library of Congress, American Life Histories – Manuscripts from the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936-1940 – Manuscript Division Library of Congress ~ http://lcweb2.loc.gov/wpaintro/wpahome.html
—–
12/22/38
NAME OF (WPA) WORKER Christabel Kidder
NAME AND ADDRESS OF INFORMANT: Frederick Savage-Harvard, Massachusetts
Mr. Frederick Savage… is eighty years old, but as strong and vigorous in appearance and manner as a man thirty years his junior. He is a handsome old man, tall, well-built with a keen eye that misses nothing, and a decisive manner tempered by a delightful sense of humour. Although his formal education stopped at the age of ten, Mr. Savage is a student, spending much of his time studying and reading. He is keenly interested in world and local affairs and is cons
tantly writing diatribes on various and sundry subjects for the local papers. He has written and privately printed several books including the History of the Town of Harvard, where he spent his early life and where he has now returned after years of living in the West and South. He is a Yankee from way back and proud of it.

There is nothing wishy-washy about Mr. Savage. He says what he thinks and says it with decision. There is no reluctance or fear on his part of expressing opinions and giving advice. He knows all the answers and doesn’t mind telling you so. His favorite theme is the “good old days” which he thinks had it all over the present when life is lived too fast and in too much of a muddle. Notwithstanding his decisive manner Mr. Savage is extremely personable. As a raconteur he has few rivals for his fund of anecdotes seem inexhaustible and his manner of telling the tales fascinating. …He is very friendly, and eager to make you at home. There is little difficulty in interviewing him for he just talks and talks and talks , not always on subjects desired, but anyhow he talks.
Mr. Savage has had three wives. His present one is a native Californian, a dainty little creature with a soft voice and a gentle manner, who is completely dominated by her big husband. Her apologetic looks when “Frederick” cusses, only eggs him on to more frequent and more colorful phrases. At eighty and in the presence of his wife, Mr. Savage doesn’t mind saying he likes the ladies and they like him. There’s not a doubt that if the present Mrs. Savage were to follow her predecessors to the grave, Mr. Savage would be “on the market” for a fourth.
Mr. Frederick Savage settled himself in a deep armchair and started to talk. There was little need to ask questions, and to attempt to guide the conversation was impossible. Mr. Savage wouldn’t be “steered.” He said what he wanted to say, in the way he wanted to say it. His wife’s various attempts to make him “conform” were brushed aside with bellows of impatience and the command to “quit jabbering and keep quiet.”
He looked at me with keen eyes and announced:

“I can tell you the cause of this Depression. Don’t know why everyone says, ‘My, Goodness! How did this depression happen.’ Easy to see how it came. Don’t know why it didn’t come sooner. In the first place I don’t think that people today know the meaning of the word economy. At any rate, there’s only a very few in the world who know how to practice it. The depression really began along in the early nineteen hundreds when these damned unions began to form. Most of the men employed in large manufacturing plants, including the railroads, joined in with some union so they could compel the companies they worked for to pay them higher wages. Right there, the good feeling was destroyed between the men that did the hiring and the men that worked for them. They commenced to have strikes, stand up strikes and sit down strikes. That wasn’t good either for labor or for the owners of the mills, who had millions invested in their buildings and railroads. Both the laboring man and the financier spent their time figuring how they could beat each other instead of having good feeling. The owners began to pay out their money for all kinds of new machinery to do away with having so many men working. Then, you see, there were more men to work than there was work for them to do.. And things kept getting worse..and the bad feeling kept getting worse. And, as I say, no one practises economy today. And people aren’t self reliant the way they used to be. There’s the damn story in a nutshell.

Now there’s lots of men who have the brains to think up plans, but they fail because they can’t put them through. People are pleasure crazy today. A man lets his best thought-out-schemes come to nothing just because he puts them on one side because he wants to play golf or go to some fool shindig. I’ve travelled a lot in this country and I can tell you the majority of people are living beyond their income. They don’t think they’re living unless they have every damned thing hitched to them either by cash payment or the installment plan. When I was young, back in the sixties (1860‘s), there was no such thing as a ‘standard of living.’ Each man se
t his own standard of what he could afford in running his household or business. Course there were business failures once in a while but you didn’t often hear of the average working man making a failure of life.

[Mr. Savage paused for breath but before I could get a word in, he was off.]


In this modern age people think they’re progressing but they’re not. No sir, not by a damn sight. The people in the towns, the cities and the states ain’t so well off financially, morally physically or mentally as they were in the sixties (1860‘s) or seventies (1870‘s) when common sense was used in regulating everything.

Most people today are looking for someone to support them without work and if they keep that idea in their heads much longer most of us’ll have to live in a cave or a dug-out or old shacks. A crust of bread and a handful of corn meal will look good to us. Work, work, work and hard work from sun-rise to sun-set, mixed with common sense, supports the people and the Government. And if they don’t follow that rule, they’re going soft and they’ll decay. It ain’t that human nature’s changed much. Folks are just the same inside..just the same as when Adam met Eve in the Garden of Eden. It doesn’t make any difference whether a woman wears wool, cottons or silk stockings, short or long dresses, hoop skirts or bustles or earrings, or diamonds, or has her dress held together with hooks and eyes or buttons or a lot of safety pins, she’s just the same inside as she ever was. The only difference is she wants more because there’s more in the world to want. The men are just the same, too. They all look, dress, and shave alike, their coats and pants and shoes and hats are all alike…but they want more, too. They don’t want to work so hard and they want more for what they do. “Children should be taught to be self-reliant but they ain’t. And they ain’t taught to mind, either. I’ve heard a lot of damn fool mothers bribe their children to be good with candy. They’re rude, too. A child should be taught to be kind and considerate to his father and mother and all elderly people. Kind words to elderly people is like candy to children. They appreciate it. Young people ought to remember that they’ll be old, too, sometime. Most children are coddled too much and so they grow up expecting it. They ought to be made more self-reliant.

[Mrs. Savage, as tiny and quiet as her husband is tall and loquacious, broke in with the remark, “Yes, self-reliance is really the answer to most of our problems, don’t you think.”
“Hell, no,” her husband let out a bellow (and continued)]

You got to have somethin’ else. You got to have honesty, too. Honesty in dealing pays better than trickery in the end. It’s funny but the meanest trickster in the world gets by because he pretends he’s honest. We can’t get away from honesty. It’s the standard of living today just as it always was. My grandfather, Captain Charles Tyler Savage always told me that no one can serve you as well as you can serve yourself, and that you’ve got to learn everything that you expect to know. I was taught to be truthful and self-reliant and all the people I ever worked for were. I went to work on a farm when I was ten years old at five dollars a month. I worked sixteen hours a day, from four in the morning till eight at night and I never thought I was abused…

A man today would think he was killed if he worked as hard as I did… but what I’m getting at by all this, is that no one I ever worked for expected anyone to help them out of a tough spot. Men and women, worked hard, made long days and each and everyone of them had learned by hard experience that if they got stuck in the mud or a snowdrift they bad to dig themselves out or they could stay there. The Government wasn’t cuddling people and giving to them and making them spineless then. In 1870 the farmers in Ohio had a wonderful crop of wheat. And they needed every cent they could get. They worked hard. Even the women and children cutting and setting up the wheat in stocks of twelve bundles each.

Then came most two weeks of rainy weather. The whole crop was almost a total loss for every kernel of wheat had a sprout on it. They never asked or expected the Government or anyone else to help them out. In 1873, when I was in Akron working on a large farm the crops were entirely eaten up by grasshoppers. They even ate the cotton lining all out of my vest when I left it on a rail fence. Not a farmer thought of the Government helping him out. In 1876 I was working on a large tobacco farm in Northfield, Massachusetts, side of the Connecticut river. The man I worked for had sixteen acres. He kept four men by the month and several more by the day. It cost a lot of money to raise and care for and fertilize sixteen acres of tobacco. It was already to harvest in one or two days. Then came a hail storm and every leaf of that tobacco was riddled. The loss was ten thousand dollars but the man took it and didn’t

expect the Government to help him. [Mr. Savage paused, then pounding the table dramatically, shouted,] There’s just three things that make men great, intuition, honesty and initiative and our Government has taken those virtues away from millions of laboring men and from thousands of business men. Now you take this Social Security thing and the Old Age Pension. It ain’t right. It’ll take all the initiative and git-up-and-git out of young folks. If they know they’ll have something to lean on when they’re old, they won’t work and believe me, a man who doesn’t work for it, shouldn’t get it.

There’s an old saying that a man is the architect of his life and believe me, it’s the truth. For a long contented life, first of all you have to work hard, be honest, honest to yourself, toward others and to God. The success of life isn’t just accumulating the almighty dollar, but to be independent and able to look every man in the face and say, ‘I don’t need anybody’s help. I can do it myself.’ That’s what’s the matter with the young people today. They can’t do it and they don’t seem to care.

[“But Frederick there’s a great many people today who can’t help being in the position they’re in. It isn’t their fault if they’re out of work and have to depend on others. We should be sorry….” little Mrs. Savage’s quiet refined voice was drowned out by a blast from her husband.]

Hell, who said I wasn’t sorry for them. Course I’m sorry for the poor fools. I don’t mean its their fault — that is not entirely. They just didn’t use their heads getting tied up with unions and crying for government aid.
I don’t believe in unions — never saw any good in ’em and never belonged to one in my life. And Hell, I don’t believe in the Government feeding the men and their families when they’re out of work by their own will. It’s got so no man can sell his labor for what its worth without joining a union. You hear a lot of talk about things being un-American. By God, that’s un-American if anything is. And it’s un-American for Washington to be telling the business men what to do and how to do it. America isn’t a free country anymore like it was when I was young and when people not only supported themselves but the Government too. I tell you if a man will work and not avoid it and will economize, he’ll get along.

…Now you take a woman moving into a new house. Ninety-nine out of a hundred wouldn’t think of moving into a house unless it has hard wood floors. Then what do they do — Hell, they rush out like the devil’s after them to buy fancy rugs to cover the floors all up. And they’re always bellowing about lots of air and sunshine and then they put draperies up and pull down the shades for fear the sun’ll fade the-rugs and the curtains. Hell! And they all belong to a lot of clubs where they’re supposed to do a lot of intellectual talking and listening and what do they do when they get home. Discuss the latest world situation or how to bring up their kids? Not on your life. The damn fools can only tell you what some other woman had on and how they wish they could have the same thing.

…I try to live right each day look to God for guidance. I tell you you may be smart enough to fool people but you can’t fool yourself or God, for he’s given each one of us a conscience, and for your own good and the good of others, use it. Travel made me see God much clearer than I ever did before. Only a great Power that we can’t comprehend could make the Grand Canyon… When I used to sit up on (a) cliff… and see the Pacific all so blue and look up Mission Valley for some forty miles and across the valley to the mountains, I knew there was a God and he was a good God. I sit for hours sometimes and think of God — and I’m thankful for his Loving care…”

[Mr. Savage’s rapid transition from dogmatic blustering to this solemn thoughtfulness left us gasping. Before we could collect our wits, a neighbor drove into the yard with a load of wood. In an instant Mr. Savage was on hip feet and out the door swearing a streak. Mrs. Savage running after him with a warm coat and hat was lost in the bedlam. The interview was apparently over for this time.]

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G'head. Try. We'll stop you…

by Annie | Leave a comment





I find myself clicking into this website, The American Thinker, more and more these days. Here’s a clip from the last paragraph of an excellent post there:

“The answer to the vast expansion of the federal government is that the states need to be willing to nullify unconstitutional laws. Federalists shouldn’t worry so much about changing the federal government to respect state sovereignty as they should about working within their own states to throw off unconstitutional acts of the federal government.”
Full article is here:

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