Freedom, Patriotism and Democracy – Understanding Our Stewardship

Freedom, Patriotism and Democracy – Understanding Our Stewardship

Commentary by Clifford HallTLB Contributing Writer

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America is embroiled in one of the most contentious and heated elections we have ever seen. It is so decisive that people on both sides of the fence are drawing battle lines. Even in their home towns were neighbors and friends seem lost in the fray of whose right and who is wrong, and are even willing to get violent about it, just to make their point known.
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But if you think this has been the first time that our country has been put to the test. You would be wrong! Our history is filled with examples of opposing views that date back to the formation of this nation. Back to when the founding fathers had to convince the populace that forming their own government was way better than being subjects of a country who as they said, “taxed them without giving them a voice to be heard.”
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Yet, the idea of setting out on their own was not well received by many. Even when the states were barely forming and deciding how to govern themselves in connection with a federal manager-ship who oversaw it all under one hat.
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Even then, they still had their moments of disagreement.
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However, as long as there are people with expressed opposition to ideas and beliefs that don’t support their cause, and are not willing to embrace the truth and the facts for what they are. There will always be a point where irrational actions flourish. Like the cases of John Hinckley, John Wilks Booth, Lee Harvey Oswell and even Cesar Sayoc Jr.. Who are all now infamous names attached to acts of terrorism and insanity.
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Perhaps the greater crime though is when we allow ourselves to be swayed by these acts and by the mainstream media. Then try to put the blame on someone else. Thinking that somehow by doing this, it justifies our own cause or belief system weak as they are. For when we do, we take on blinders that will not allow us to see the facts that need to be reviewed from a neutral standpoint.
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In other words, we do nothing but close our eyes to the truth. And thus, step into that place were all our actions are motivated by passion and perception. Rather than the issues at hand which need to be viewed with an open mind.
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This case that I’m making before you in this article. Is for the sole purpose of putting the facts out there in such a way, that we all stop trying to justify our incoherent demeanor with wrong actions and words that really do not promote the best interest of this country and its future well-being.
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My first argument goes to the national debt. As we all know, we have over a 21 trillion dollar monkey hanging on our backs. Coming from a banking perspective background, I can tell you without a doubt, that the growing debt is no different than a person who can’t seem to manage their money right. I will add also to this, that President Trump did not make this problem. But inherited it from his predecessor just so that we are clear on that one point.
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As of 2018, the U.S. national debt has exceeded $21 trillion. And under the Obama administration we witnessed one of its biggest add on in just a short period of time. What does this mean to you and me, you ask? It’s simple!
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This is more than America’s annual economic output each year. Think of it this way. What the Federal and State government take in as taxes each year to help keep them operational sound. Does not equal the felonious checks they keep writing to keep them afloat. Now take that and the immigration issue coveting the mainstream media’s main focus. And what do you have? A real big problem!
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We hear someone out there everyday saying in front of a camera. That America can absorb these unfortunate groups of people into our communities without worry. Because we have the wealth and the means to do it. So, why should we be so stingy with our wealth.
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I don’t know what car muffler these people have been smoking on. But let me tell you something in conjunction with that. This issue is not about depriving some of making a better life for themselves and it never has been. Or about immigration in the form we see being discussed by the so-called informed minds of the press. It’s about realism and being responsible stewards of our nation. A responsibility that belongs to ever citizen of this country.
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The argument could be made if I really wanted to get right down to it. That my ancestors who came here from Europe in 1773, didn’t come with the expectation of getting a free handout. They knew that they would have to make it on there own. And they did! Carving a future out of the untamed dirt of the wilderness which they made theirs. But the caravan heading to our borders today know without a doubt that once integrated in, they will be able to take advantage of our social programs. All because we have advertised this openly. And because, many of them do not have the education to completely manage their affairs on their own.
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There are also criminal elements coming in with these groups who are using the herd factor to slip through the seams. Individuals who will end up jeopardizing our well-being and safety and those of our children because they have learned to flaunt the law. But does the democratic party care that these individuals should be carefully screened? No!
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Each of these groups coming to our borders will have unwanted threats mingling in among the women and children they put out in front to disguise the true threat which lies in the heart of the group. So, there is no easy solution except to build the wall in order to improve the legalization process which every other alien trying to enter out country has to go through to get citizenship.
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This issue whether we want to admit it or not, is linked to the national debt problem by their very nature. A problem which many past government elected official’s failed to deal with.
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Think about this when you sit down to enjoy your evening meal. The last time the debt-to-GDP ratio was more than 100 percent was in 1946, when the nation had just come out of World War II.
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So, just so you know in order to arrive at a country’s debt-to-GDP ratio, one has to compare the national debt by each year to its GDP or size of the economy. This should worry you. For it is telling us that our country’s ability to meet its obligations by how much it has produced or earned. Is really not measured by how much we can take in from other nations. Or, by how much we can absorb of their problems. For the more we keep adding to this dilemma with our own ignorance. The more we risk finding out what that will all mean the hard way.
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We see the democratic party out gunning for seats in the house and senate. The problem I have with this party boils down to this. They have fought hand tooth and nail over the last two years to keep the trade deficit in place that did not serve our best interest. They’ve talked about the debt-to-GDP and want to add higher taxes to not only the rich but poor as well. These factors are linked and cannot be separated. And we have only to look at our past history under this same group to see how well all that worked out before.
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Whether we admit it or not, they have kept us in the throngs of becoming a purchasing nation and not a production entity with goods to sell. Bottom-line is that we have more goods coming in than what we have going out. And what the experts and so-called informed media members don’t seem to understand or want to address. Is that in a capitalist market that kind of operation cannot hope to survive staying off of a one-sided operation.
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That’s like a farmer who is producing crops and livestock to sell at an open market in order to keep his family fed and his livelihood going. Unfortunately the patrons in that market are only buying a small percentage of what he has to offer. But leaving the rest to rot.
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Yet, on the other side of the coin, they are more than willing to sell the farmer their gasoline and their equipment and other stuff at full price. Knowing that they stole the plans for the tractor from the neighboring town and are now producing it at half the price it cost our manufactures there to make it.
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None of it equates to fair trade – and the cost of their goods is ten times more expensive than what the farmer is able to produce himself in income in exchange for it.
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In simple mathematical terms it equates to this. We are being irresponsible with our future and our children’s future. Which is no different that a person walking into a bank who has gotten themselves into financial trouble. We’ve seen it over and over again to many times. When some member comes in who can’t seem to manage their money they gets themselves overdrawn and eventually run the risk of bankruptcy. Yet, they don’t seem to understand the cause of their plight. At least, not until they end up losing everything they own and try to blame it on someone else for their mistakes.
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A case in point. You have one individual who is arguing with a teller. Telling them that I must have money in my account because I have all these checks you gave me. Then the tellers comes back and says to the individual, “do you ever keep a register to check your balance with?” The person’s replies, “no – why should I? I have these checks you issued me. And I deposit my paycheck in my account like I’m supposed to.”
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This person I’m speaking about let’s say is an elderly lady whose is in her eighties and her husband just passed away. Up until that last year she was used to having him manage all their finances. So, she was clueless when it came to understanding her own account.
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This is something I think a lot of Americans today have trouble understanding, which is anything to do with the national debt problem. They are willing to look the other way, rather than actually delving into the real issue which would require them learn for themselves what all this means.
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Now let’s take this argument one step further shall we. We as a nation think that we have unlimited resources. We even go so far as to think that we can help the entire world.
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It’s true that we are one of the greatest countries ever to exist. But that is not because we have unlimited wealth. It’s because we have created a democracy unlike any other nation around the globe. Where people are able to set their own paths to financial security and obtaining the kind of life and success they want to live and other blessings.
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The biggest players of these issues are politicians like Hillary Clinton, Polesi, Schumer and Booker who go around offering the multitude of gullible voters the promise of a Utopian society that is nothing more than a socialist movement seeking to take over the constitution of the United States and rewrite it to meet their needs. They do it by dangling a carrot such as free college education for all young people in front of the faces. As well, as help for undocumented immigrants through an open door policy. Which would include refugees coming in from the middle-east.
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Yet, underneath the surface of it all. It reeks of pure fiction in the making. For it would burden our already over taxed welfare programs and other federal assistance to the point of breaking our entire financial economy in one move. Not to mention, adding more pressure to the middle class tax-payers.
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All factors that would surely increase our national debt to a dangerous and irresponsible level. And for which there would be no return. Because once it crests the 40 and 50 trillion dollar mark. We are going to be the next wave of refugees trying to get into Canada in order to avoid the chaos in our own country.
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Now, I’m sure some of you out there will disagree with this. Because your so focused on proving to the world that you are right and it is wrong. That you will shout to the halls of the Capital it self to get your point on the docket. But actions my friend, always speak louder than words. And here is a man, a billionaire by the name of Trump. Who didn’t have to give up his life as he knew it to enter into the political arena and take the harassment he has been forced to suffer through.
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He could just as easily have told everyone to go to hell. But he chose instead to try to make a difference. And during his short term in office. He has managed to bring about more positive changes in this country, than any President before him. And all with the mainstream media and the democratic party refusing to give him credit for the direction in which this nation has been heading since the election of 2016.
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Here’s another fact too to consider while you mulling about on what I’ve address here. During the Obama presidency we had a man in office who as we all know went around apologizing to the Arab world for who and what we stood for as a country. And during his two terms in office. He sold automatic weapons to the drug cartel in Mexico and paid money out to terrorist organizations when he paid Iran. And still, there are individuals out there marching in the streets who want to treat Obama like some demigod to be worshiped for his acts which in my opinion undermined the very security and safety of our nation both domestically and abroad.
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Then there was the Clinton administration to add into this. A president who was willing to weaken our military and was more about image than actually doing his job while in office. Not to mention, he avoided so many sex scandals that outshine even the current allegation which the supreme court nomination Judge Kavanaugh had to suffer through unjustly. And yet, there are those who still think he is some kind of celebrity.
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We have a chance to change the future for all Americans in a positive way. But I seen voters who still look to Hillary Clinton, a person who lied about the emails violates, who created a false dozier and who’s action in Benghazi cost the life of a good American.
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This so called candidate of the democratic party has profited off her time in office and looks to do so again. Not to mention, the Clintons used their foundation to help orchestrate a coup against President Trump. Which is still in play today because of the corruption behind it. And what do you have from all this? The kind of deep state hypocrisy that only happens in the movies. The kind rated U for unbelievable. And yet, very few from this generation seems to care about that stain on our history and where this would have taken us, if Hilary had actually been elected.
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Perhaps if these individuals had personally lived through so many different things like I have. Which included the 50’s, 60’s, 70’s and on. They would appreciate far more all the privileges and freedoms so many fought for, that has been handed down to them. I was there when Kennedy was assassinated in 1963 and heard my mother calling out from our front porch, that the President of the United States was dead. But to know what that meant to the world. You would first have take into consideration that he was the first Democratic candidate that both my parents who were republican seem to like. For he didn’t follow the same pattern we see today in the party he once cherished and gave his life for.
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He believed in equality for all, and followed that philosophy right through the civil rights movement with Martin Luther King Jr. who marched on Washington signaling the advent of a new age. Yet, during this same time period. The country was under siege internally just like in today’s times. Back then, I had just turned eighteen and was dawning the uniform of a Marine. Even though to do so, was unpopular.
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It was nothing to find oneself being spit upon by the same kind of mentality that the left wing radical you see today are showing. Who go around accosting conservatives in public to get their point a crossed. Back then they went under the name of hippies and love children. But the new generation of socialist deviants now bear the term hard leftist or socialists party.
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None of these individuals though seem to comprehend or want to understand that to maintain a democracy in today’s ever changing world. It requires acting in a commonsense manner. Which would included understanding that things like welfare and social programs for the needy, do not come free.
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California, New York and Illinois just to name a few are good examples what with their suffocating cost of living and huge population can really do to a community and a state. They are home to an inordinate number of households receiving public assistance. In fact, California alone with $103 billion going toward welfare, the Golden State’s spending on the financially needy is more than the next two on the list combined.
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New York, at number two, paid out $61.4 billion in 2015, while Texas who has seen an incursion of immigrants a crossed its borders, is in the third spot. Spending $35.4 billion, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.
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All but Texas is a democratically run state. But our tax dollars are being fed into the democratic states such as California to help keep them afloat. Because they spend more on public welfare than all of the bottom 40 states and don’t have the funds to maintain it themselves.
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Population plays a huge part, obviously, but there’s more to it than that.
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“Regardless of how populated any particular state is, you want to pay attention to these numbers because they foreshadow future budget problems for everyone. When you consider the fact that many states run operating deficits and have enormous debt problem. One begins to wonder if some of these numbers are sustainable for the long term.
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Here’s how they ranked in 2015 under the Obama administration.
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1. California $103 billion
2. New York $61 billion
3. Texas $35 billion
4. Florida $27 billion
5. Pennsylvania $27 billion
6. Illinois $21 billion
7. Ohio $20 billion
8. Massachusetts $19 billion
9. New Jersey $17 billion
10. Michigan $16 billion
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Simply put, cold hard facts don’t lie.
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Other articles from TLB Contributing Writer Clifford Hall

Clifford Hall is a Marine Corp veteran with a Top Secret Crypto security clearance. He served during the Vietnam and cold war conflict until 1978. He is a graduate of the University of Utah, Salt Lake City, with BA degree in Criminal Justice. Clifford worked for 22 years until his retirement in various aspects of law enforcement, including Law Enforcement Bureau of the Department of Correction, South Salt Lake Police Dept, Midvale Police Department and Homeland Security under TSA rolling out security at the Nation’s Airports after 9/11. Since his retirement from law enforcement, he developed an interest in the financial world and has served as a Senior Financial Advisor involving Mortgages, and Business Development at major concerns in Utah.

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