Category Uncategorized

Dec 14 2011

Hot Potato Couch Potato

 

Hot potato, couch potato

 

Imagine if you will, the following scenario.  Joe Mainer is in the process of trying to support a family.  Joe and his wife have three dependents living at home, one healthy child, one with a debilitating handicap and Joe’s crippled mother, who is confined to a wheelchair.  Despite some financial assistance, the family’s budget is stretched to the maximum with very little room for the unexpected.  I would daresay that this scenario is not fiction for some who read this column.

But the unexpected does happen.  Joe’s 18-year-old son inexplicably drops out of college and moves back home.  Joe Jr. now spends his days on the couch eating, watching TV and railing against the establishment that doesn’t “understand” him.  Mom and Dad love their son.  Stung by his criticism that their dysfunctional parenting has led him to his emotionally crippled state, they try to do his every bidding to “help” him.  But his demands begin to pull funds away from the dependents, which have life threatening needs.

Mr. and Mrs. Mainer are in full crises mode.  In desperation, they use their credit card to bridge the financial gap.  Soon the payments are due.  They don’t have the money and, with mortgage payments and healthcare bills pending or in arrears, they now face a calamity of their own making.  Their friends and neighbors are willing to make a portion of the payments, but the Mainers have to come up with the balance with money they don’t have.  Joe Sr. is faced with a tough decision.  He now can better understand the tough parenting of his parents.

Joe the elder’s parents didn’t care if they were called dysfunctional.  They didn’t care whether their children liked them or not.  Their primary goal in parenting Joe was that he be a responsible hardworking adult. Now the father, Joe must make a very, very difficult decision.

Joe Sr. orders his son out of the house.  He demands that his son get his own job and support himself.  The father understands that, if the healthy adult son isn’t kicked out of the nest, he risks losing the whole nest.

The Governor of Maine faces this very situation with this great State.  For over forty years, Maine’s operating budgets were stretched very thin.  Instead of balancing the budgets, Democrats enabled the debt increasing tactics of the left by creating more pathways to entitlements for all who wished to indulge.  Soon droves of seekers came to bathe in Maine’s entitlement utopia.

The payments have come due.  The Governor is asking the couch potatoes to get off the couch and work before the whole system comes crashing down.  If it does, only the most vulnerable will lose.  The couch potatoes will simply move to a different couch.

As expected, the Democrats are in full uproar as Governor LePage works to balance the books.  These obstructionists have a vested interest in keeping things in crisis mode.  A crisis usually spawns another government bureaucracy. So they are in full attack and no dishonesty is too low.

The Governor wants all healthy childless adults off the dole, from middle aged and no lower than 19.  But Democrats now have redefined middle-aged as “elders” and children as 19-20 year olds.  The State has no money but Democrats rant that if we implement reform we will lose Federal matching funds, which make up 65% of the costs.  It seems the left is comfortable with defaulting on 35% of the DHHS budget.  There is no money to cover the extravagant entitlement spending.  We must stay within our means if we want to continue to protect our State’s most vulnerable.  We must get the couch potatoes out of the nest if we want to save the nest.  Let’s Set Maine Free!

Aug 3 2011

THE GODS OF HYPOCRISY

THE GODS OF HYPOCRISY

 

            Imagine yourself in need of an army.  You are faced with the task of changing the political landscape of rural New England states that for years had been known for their frugal, independent and God-fearing lifestyles.  How would you accomplish this?  How would you wrest the traditions that made up the fabric of years of generations linked by blood from the very fingers of the parents that birthed them?  You would follow the template set forth in the European Marxist and Communist revolutions of so many years ago.

Take the earnest hopes of parents who have sacrificed for a better future for their little ones.  Promise to be trusted stewards of these children’s education.  Pretend to hold this sacred trust in reverent high regard.  Now that you have control of these children at their most vulnerable stage, just beginning to blossom into adulthood, instead of teaching the very skills and practicum necessary to excel at the specific professions they may choose, you begin to barrage and impregnate their young impressionable fertile minds with your own agenda in an effort to stimulate a revolution that would devastate and crumble years of foundations laid in the hearts and minds of America’s youth.  You would capitalize on the rebellious nature of young emotions encouraging their propensity to defy authority, enflaming them with rhetoric railing against the institutions of government claiming it has failed the common man.  At the same time, you would mock the homespun common sense beliefs of the children’s upbringing, declaring them not worthy of higher learning.  In time, it would seem success was nothing short of imminent.

Imagine yourself in the present.  You have established a death grip on the educational system of New England.  Your classrooms have been the breeding ground for liberal think tanks across the nation for years.  Students have followed your model of “the end justifies the means” and have wreaked havoc on the local and State political system compromising its integrity.  But the common man in Maine finds himself in much worse conditions than before all the promises of a New Deal were made to him.  So the “commoners” revolt and, much to your surprise put a common man in a place of power.

Imagine your reaction when the leaders put there by the common man, despite their weak and clumsy attempts at leadership, put in place a reform that shakes the very core of your power structure.  They demand honesty, accountability and integrity in the voting system.  No longer will there be giggles and snorts at fraternity and sorority parties after young students have done your dirty work and made a mockery of the democratic process on election nights.

Imagine how you would retaliate.  It would be loud and angry.  You would decry the fact that the Republicans are denying these young students the right to vote…and vote…and vote again.  After all, these are educational opportunities.  They’re young and they need the practice.  And voting in multiple States brings so much diversity to the experience.

Imagine if the empire you had worked so hard to build was in danger of crumbling.  You would use every diversionary tactic you could think of to avoid the honest truth.  Wouldn’t you….or would you?

Jul 26 2011

“________” ERS?

“________” ERS?

 

This past Thursday, The Maine Conservative Voice was invited to attend a “Capital for a Day” town hall style meeting of the Governor, Commissioners and the people of Piscataquis County.  My wife and I had the honor of sitting with my good friend Jason Savage, of Maine People Before Politics, alongside First Lady of Maine, Ann LePage.  The meeting was well attended.  The Center Theater was at least three-quarters full with a small contingent from the “I’m Just A Number”ers in attendance.  The night was filled with lively debate that stayed for the most part respectful.  It was disappointing to see the Chairman for the Democrat Party show up with a t-shirt bearing the insignia of the “Maine People Are Just A Percentage Point”ers but it just gives evidence to my assertion that Democrats view people as just mere statistics.

We left the meeting feeling greatly encouraged that the Governor has not wavered in his resolve to turn Maine’s spend thrifty governing style of the past 40 years into one of a frugal live within your means style that is more befitting to the Maine he represents.  It was impressive, to say the least, watching Governor LePage and State Treasurer Bruce Poliquin work seamlessly in tandem to deal with the several questions raised from the audience.  The Governor would present the broader goal with his perhaps brusque mannerism while the Treasurer would fill in the finer details with their fiscal impact in very precise terms for the people of Piscataquis County to hear.  It was this one-two punch that quickly silenced the protests from the “I Have No Identity”ers.

As was stated earlier, my wife and I had the privilege of spending time with First Lady LePage during the evening and this only reinforced what so many of us have come to see in her.  Maine is immeasurably blessed to have Ann LePage as our First Lady.  My wife, who still at times is uncomfortable going to all the political functions that we must, felt instantly at ease as Mrs. LePage talked with her about family, the evening and the issues that face our great State.  As we talked about the behavior of the “You Are Just A Statistic”ers towards her husband, the First Lady made an observation that I thought very insightful.  (It should be noted here that the First Lady never referenced the protesters with anything but respect in the conversations I had with her.  The tongue-in-cheek sarcasm is the work of the one and only Andy Torment.)  Ann LePage observed that the protesters always started out loud but quickly quieted when the facts were presented.  The Governor has nothing to hide, she stated, and it is hard to argue with facts.

Finally, yes, I am mocking the protesters.  Not because they are protesting.  That is a civil liberty protected by the Constitution.  I just can’t comprehend an organization that would so blatantly relegate the voting public to a number.  I am an individual.  I am not a number.  I am not a percentage point.  My name is Andy Torbett.  I will not relinquish my identity to any organization that I belong to.  I detest any institution that views humanity as percentage points.  My principles and beliefs are not to be ignored and I get angry when they are.  A heavy dose of independence has been past down through my Scotch and Irish bloodline.  So don’t fence me in.  I really don’t like it.  I am not a number.