Opinion: Taking Our Country Back!
The Endeavor News
by Ken Gerg
(Long-time Cameron County resident Ken Gerg has played an organizational role in the local Tea Party.)
Cameron County’s initial TEA (Taxed Enough Already) Party meeting would, by any standards, have to be considered a major success. Approximately 150 citizens who are concerned over the country’s direction attended the two-hour meeting.
This event was prompted by the atrocious voter turnout in the spring primaries (approximately 29 percent in Cameron County, 19 percent in McKean). The Tea Party is gearing up for the Nov. 2 elections and is trying to put candidates in power who will stop the out of control spending in both Pennsylvania and Washington.
The Tea Party is not allied to any political party. Its goal is simply to take our country back from the tax-and-spend politicians; to stop the bloated bureaucracies of the local, state and federal governments; further, to try to get elected politicians to abide by the Constitution. Currently the federal government is spending money at the rate of $112,000 per second, or about $4.4 billion per day. The national debt is $13.3 trillion dollars.
During the first 10 months of President Obama’s administration, the federal debt grew by over $2.5 trillion dollars. This is more than the total debt accumulated during the administration of all United States presidents from Washington through Reagan.
What is a trillion dollars, you ask? If you filled Penn State’s football stadium (all 100,000 plus seats) and gave every person there $1,000, you would have to fill the stadium every weekend for roughly the next 40,000 years before you have a trillion dollars.
Many examples of the out of control government were brought up, one being the Department of Energy established in 1977 to eliminate our dependency on foreign oil. Today, this department has 16,000 employees and a $24 billion dollar budget and after 33 years we buy more foreign oil than we did in 1977.
The Constitution was quoted many times throughout the evening and it was mentioned how the current Washington insiders seem to be doing everything in their power to circumvent the most powerful document of our republic.
If there was any downside to the evening, it had to be the absence of younger voters who, in essence, have the most to lose if this wasteful, out of control spending is allowed to continue.
With a very few short weeks left until Nov. 2, now is not the time to be bashful about speaking out against the threat to American sovereignty, the blessings provided by our republic and our children’s future.
Read this story and more online at endeavornews.com or in this week’s edition of the Endeavor News.
