Category Better Life

Jan 30 2019

The Art of Redefinition

 

If only it were a lost art and we had left it there long ago. Its device and scheme is a plague upon our Nation’s soul. So it has followed us from distant shores, infectious and diseased, to raise its ugly bulbous head in a legislative eruption of taxation.

All that you know has been turned on its head if what you define is not inclined to match the needs of the leftist Democrat Party. Like the idea that life is only life if it can by chance escape the womb to be seen in hand by those who have redefined its existence, unless if, of course, you’ re a grublet ooze encased in Martian ice deep in space. Here in Maine, the party of Janet Mills, Chellie Pingree, and Jared Golden have redefined what “no new taxes” means.

It means a blunderbuss barrage of tax increases, new tax legislation, and a quadrupling of the bond burden, not to mention a myriad of new regulatory burdens to stymie business growth. The future is bright, if you think walking down a tunnel straight into a locomotive is bright. It’s all a matter of perspective.

Here are some low-lights to the Democrat’s bulldozer approach to Maine’s economy. A local sales tax to give small business a “no new taxes” punch in the gut. As usual, rural Maine gets hit the worst.

A tax on heating oil, gasoline, propane, diesel, and every other fuel, with jet fuel exempted. That is a relief. Mainers can breath easier knowing our personal jets are tax exempted and our Democrat politicians can jet tax free to global warming summits.

Then we have an income tax increase. Why not? With all these “no new taxes”, Maine’s economy is bracing for a nuclear blast?

-Andy Torbett TMCV

Jan 20 2019

Marching Straight Into A BuzzFeed

 

The latest journalistic debacle of BuzzFeed proportions has shown the spotlight again on a once revered institution devoid of any integrity. The Nation has in many ways become numb to it, even at times excepting this as the new normal. Despite this, the next station in the march of relativism should leave even the most morally callous appalled.

Still wiping the slathered froth flecked across their faces left from reporting a false BuzzFeed hit piece, the media has moved from one frenzy to another, with all the careful calculations of a bloody shark melee. Once again the rush to smear the President has left the media reporting a misleading, tainted source. Always there are repercussions to falsehoods, but with this, journalism turned propaganda has upped the ante.

It has the reputations and the safety of children in its ugly grasp and these lies of omission would in times past sicken even the most hardiest of smear technicians. An edited video has been circulated by news outlets purporting to show young, male, Catholic, students harassing on native American man at the recent March for Life. Not once was an effort made to corroborate, investigate, or validate the incident.

Now full unedited videos have surfaced which exonerates the boys and proves the dishonest pattern in modern media. By design or negligence, the damage to the children has already been accomplished. They and their families have to live under constant guard now because of the threats against their lives.

The patented wailed “He made me do it” response from the media will be pointed at the President. Pardon the interruption if Americans should recall the defining of integrity as doing the right thing in spite of adversity and isolation. When will true journalistic integrity please stand up?!

-Andy Torbett

Dec 18 2018

Finish the Task

 

Bruce Poliquin will, and must, continue his challenge to the Ranked Choice voting system and the Constitutionality of the results. He will, because it is his choice as a citizen of this Republic and he has the freedom to do so. He must, because he is a Representative of the voters in the 2nd Congressional District (CD2) who, 20,000 strong, voted against the RCV and feel disenfranchised by the results of the new voting system.

It bears repeating that those who decry the challenges to RCV as an effort to erode the voter’s confidence in the voting process spent millions in an effort to erode the voter’s confidence in the voting process in order to pass RCV. To one eligible citizen there is given one vote. That is the Constitution and, as Representative Poliquin took an oath to defend the Constitution, he is required by that oath to challenge this attack on the very foundation of our Republic.

In this light, the argument and subsequent mockery of Poliquin that he did not fully criticize the RCV during the election and that this somehow invalidates his challenge is at best irrelevant and at worst, laughable. The Representative is bound by his oaths of public servitude to his constituents, the integrity of this Republic, and the ideals set forth in the Constitution of the United States. Yet, he is, of course, free to violate these oaths, as some do, for personal ease and deflection of responsibility, but the erosion of the individual voting rights of the citizen will only continue.

No, Bruce Poliquin is bound to see this through, to finish this task. In so doing,perhaps, he can raise the awareness of the, too often, apathetic voter. Maybe there can arise enough passion to repeal this travesty.

-Andy Torbett