Introduction

Average American Bob

Introduction –

My name is Bob Tacy, Jr.  I consider myself an average American. I was raised as an only child, in a lower-income working family… my dad was an iron molder until he was 55, then ran his own two-pump gas station for seven years, working seven days a week twelve hours a day. The only breaks he got were when I relieved him for a few hours on weekends during school months and a few more days during the summer. Other than that he took three days off each year… Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years. He spent his later years working for a friend who own a gas station in Anaheim California. He worked until he was 82 years old and died two and half years later. Hard work and the willingness to do what you had to do to take care of your family was how I was brought up. Not once in his life did he apply for or receive any government assistance.

At seventeen I quit high school and joined the Army but got my GED during Basic Training. I Served three years, two and half of those years in Germany. I made the rank of Sergeant E-5 in 31 months. When I got out I took a labor job for minimum wage.  From that first job I was always looking for a better job because I wanted more for my family than I had growing up. Not that I was unhappy, but when I saw people with new, nice cars living in big houses… I had the desire to want to achieve that standard of living.

After three job changes I ended up working for two major corporations; General Telephone Directory Co. (Yellow Pages) and General Tire & Rubber Company.  With those two companies I had a chance to develop sales and management skills and was very successful with both companies.  With that confidence I took a big risk, even with  four kids, and started my own sales training company in 1978. After a four-year shaky start, it resulted in a 30-plus year very successful career that allowed me to raise our standard of living and gave my kids an atmosphere of success to grow up in.  I was able to educate all four of my kids and help give my daughters nice weddings.  I achieved my ultimate goal of living on a lake with a boat house.  But it was too far from the kids and grandkids so I moved back to the Northwest, fulfilling yet another goal… having the freedom to live wherever I chose in order to be close to family.

I didn’t pay much attention to politics as I spent most waking days (and many nights) working hard to maintain our standard of living that I wanted for myself and my family.  Like my father, not once in those almost 40 years did I ask for or get any government assistance.  Not when any of my kids got sick, not when I paid out of pocket to have two hips replaced at age 55… or during any other time where we had financial difficulties.  In our free country it is no one else’s responsibility to provide for me or my family. Yes there were a couple of times that I asked for and received some from family, but that was it.

Starting in 2006 as I wound down my career and extensive traveling, I had more free time and I started to became more engaged in politics.  At the time I became fascinated with a new vibrant, enthusiastic young man by the name of Barak Obama. But as a professional speaker and seminar presenter for most of my life, as I watched and listened, something was very wrong. The tone, the body language, the carefully woven words that were never specific… a presentation style that mirrored a typical salesman making his best sales-pitch, at times sounding like a old-time salvation preacher… then back to the ‘snake-oil’ salesman of the past. He used strange words that I had never heard in politics such as “redistribution of wealth” – “fundamentally transforming the United States of America.”  What did he mean?  Whose wealth? To whom?  At what income where you considered the wealthy?  Transformed into what?  Thus started my quest for knowledge.  My wife began reading every political book out there and I started with the Internet.  What we learned was disturbing and not just with our president… but politics in general.

I tell you all this to give you an idea of who I am and where I stand politically.  I consider myself a “Constitutional Conservative,” but I also believe that you have to use common sense. I intend on covering many political subjects as well as how politics is linked to social programs.  I will speak the truth and the measure of that truth will be Constitution of the United States… the same Constitution that I held up my right hand and swore to uphold and protect from all enemies, foreign and domestic when I enlisted in the Army.

I would like to make two important core points that I will refer to many times in my articles… In a free society people must be self-reliant and be responsible for their own livelihood regardless of their standard of living. In a free society it’s impossible for everyone to have equal results. What is important is that every able-bodied person have equal opportunity. The results will differ because of ambition, education, training, the amount of effort one is willing to put forth, hard work, commitment, desire, vision, confidence and support. I fully understand that there are people whom for mental and/or physical reason can’t take advantage of opportunity and are what I refer to as the “truly needy…” meaning they don’t have the means to provide for themselves and have a roof over their head, enough food to eat, don’t have access to fresh, clean water or able to see a doctor when they are sick or injured… those of us who feel a moral responsibility should help those people either directly or through our churches, charities and other organizations.  I accomplish this through my local Puyallup South Hill Rotary Club and donations to The Salvation Army, Boy Scouts and several other organizations.  We are the most charitable people in the world, and for me and my wife, we feel a moral obligation to help others. Besides everything else that’s available, we believe in family and helping one another.  Here you will see the first of many conflicts between personal freedom and liberty and the federal government.  Every dollar the government takes from any of us in taxes to help those they think needs help… infringes on our freedom to use our money to help who WE think needs it more.

So let me end this article with the following two thoughts that will be alluded to in future articles:

There is nothing in the Constitution of the United States that allows the Federal Government to take money or property in the form of taxes from an individual or group of people and give it to another person or group because they, the federal government, feel that the recipient person or group deserves it more. 

Read that again and let it sink in.  In our free, constitutional republic no one is in any way responsible for the livelihood of another. To take from the labor of a person to give to another is a gross infringement of the worker’s freedom.  You may say… we have a moral obligation but you are wrong!  You may feel a “personal moral obligation” but it’s not the place of the federal government to establish or push their idea of what is moral or not for anyone. You and I elect the president and members of congress to do the work that the states can’t do themselves.  Just two examples would be to collect taxes for the security of the nation by funding the military and paying for the up-keep and preservation of federal parks, buildings, monuments etc. They cannot and should ever have the power to demand or force a person to be charitable.  Just because the progressives have been successful over the last 100 years in gradually distorting and over-reaching the Constitution for that purpose in gaining power for a centralized federal government, does not make it right.  The core objective of our unique and wonderful Constitution is to offer the individual maximum freedom and liberty. I’m all for caring for the TRULY needy and we’ll discuss the ways to do that legally in future articles.

Next,

The Federal Government cannot give anything to anyone unless they first take it away from someone else.

The Federal government has no money… it produces nothing.  It can only pay for any social program by taking millions, billions and trillions of dollars from other Americans or Companies and Corporations.  There is a basic truth today… there is a “provider” class and a “recipient” class and today we have more recipients than we do providers.  As this trend has continued we find that most of the ‘recipients’ don’t pay any income taxes leaving the entire burden on the minority ‘provider class.’  Let me explain it this way… if you rob from Peter and give to Paul… you will always have the support of Paul.  Once you have more Paul’s than Peter’s… it’s over… the Paul’s will continue to demand that the government take more and more from Peter to give to Paul or they will not support those in the government who said they would give them Peter’s money (or social benefits).  What makes this concept even more dangerous is that administrations of late are delaying the inevitable taxing of the providers by printing and borrowing the money to expand the recipient class.  But there is no free lunch, at some point our kids, grandkids and most likely generations beyond them will have to pay greatly increased taxes to cover just the interest on the debt, never mind the pay down the debt itself.

We are living in a very uncertain America.  Never has our country been so divided in so many ways – gender – economically – generationally and yes, racially fueled by an increased number of “Race-Baiters.” Our economy is on life-support with the Fed injecting 85 billion dollars every month into the economy.  The top 1% is growing like gang busters while the middle class is in decline both in numbers and income.  We have over half of Americans that make up two groups… not working and on some government assistance program those who are working at lower paying jobs, not paying income taxes and many of them also receiving welfare or tax credits.  Those folks make up just about half of all Americans. The number of people in poverty is the highest ever with the number of people in the work force at its lowest levels in 30 years. Our debt is over 106% of GDP and our national debt is over 17 trillion and growing at about a trillion a year.  We have over 124 trillion in unfunded liabilities for social security, medicare and drug program.  That puts every American in debt over a million dollars each.

I hope you agree with me that it’s not about Democrats, Republicans or Independents.  It’s about far left liberalism that borders on socialism and marxism philosophies against constitutional conservatives that want to start the pendulum swinging back the other way towards smaller government and lower taxes. We are at the turning point on several key areas of our society and politics as to whether we are going to remain a constitutional republic or go down the road of Europe to socialism.  For those who love our Constitution, freedom and liberty… we have to educate those who are being lied to and mislead as to what direction this administration is taking our country.

You don’t have to be a constitutional scholar or even a formally educated person to learn the truth. Getting started is to read the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution  a few times and understand what it says.  Regardless of what some would like you to believe it’s really not that complicated. Next is to use your God-given common sense.  I look forward to sharing my ideas and solutions to some of our most pressing problems.

Average American Bob