If you’re tired of polls telling you what to think, you’re not alone.  It’s time to use your common sense and stop accepting what polls tell you people are doing, thinking, accepting, rejecting or otherwise planning.  We’ve been presented with polls on taxes, spending, corporations, immigration, global warming, oil drilling, health insurance, abortion and subjects ad infinitum.
The polls have become the “straw man” while government bloats itself in America.  We now not only have federal department heads, but we also have “czars” in each department – rivaling the number of Czars in the Romanoff dynasty.  We don’t just have Ambassadors and State Department workers; we have a virtual “shadow” in each area.  We now have government bureaucrats attempting to run banking and insurance and car manufacturing.  It’s beginning to sound like…well, Venezuela.  America’s debt and loan guarantees could go to the tens of trillions of dollars.

We’re told of executives and their terrible, unconscionable “bonuses”, yet little is mentioned about the bonuses given to politically-placed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac board members (think Jamie Gorelik and the multi millions of dollars she walked away with, or the multi thousands of dollars Rahm Emanuel took after a short stint on the board).
Private executives receive bonuses for growing business and providing jobs.  Government bureaucrats get bonuses for spending taxpayers’ money and not creating any jobs.

Here’s the difference between government and the private industry in a nutshell.

In private business a manager is given a budget and is expected to work within it or under it.  In government, a manager is given a budget and expected to spend it all or go over budget so that the following year he/she can request a bigger budget.  Private business is spending its own money.  Government is spending your money.  And, right now, it is planning to spend so much of your money that the department of Management and Budget is on record as saying – at this rate – it will bankrupt America.

You don’t need polls to show you what is happening.  We have an administration that is:

•    Growing government at an alarming rate.
•    Spending more than has been spent in the entire history of our nation.
•    Backing union efforts to overturn the time-honored secret ballot.
•    Moving to take power over more banks, car companies, and private businesses.
•    Proposing to take over health insurance and regulate what medical treatments it will approve for patients.
•    Opposing school choice and vouchers – siding with the teachers’ union over children.
•    Moving to limit free speech by hatching a version of the “fairness doctrine”.
•    Cutting the defense budget.
•    Weakening intelligence gathering by telling the world how we gather it.
•    Appointing Harold Koh, who prefers foreign law to our Constitution, to the State Department.
•    Naming Janet Napolitano as Homeland Security Chief  — and allowing her to develop a “right wing/veterans enemy list”.
•    Criticizing America at every point on a foreign tour.
•    Appeasing foreign dictators, denying their murderous acts and remaining mute through their condemnations of America.

Polls won’t give you answers to all of this.  Your common sense will.

I have a friend who listens to Spanish talk radio during the day and listened throughout President Obama’s recent meetings.  The leaders were calling our President ill informed.  They suggested that Obama needs to go back to school to learn history.  Even in his presence they mocked America and our President did not say a word in rebuttal.  He didn’t speak out about what America has done for people of all countries.  He never mentioned how America has given blood and treasure to aid those who couldn’t help themselves.

It’s echoes of Jimmy Carter.  You’ll remember that it was Carter, after our American embassy was taken over in Teheran and hostages were taken by Iranis, who wrote a hand written note to Ayatollah Khomeni advising the Muslim prelate that the action would not hurt America’s goal to have good relations with Iran.  This resulted in the Ayatollah calling America “a paper tiger”.

And now we have President Obama shaking hands and attempting to appease tyrants who oppose America.  The photos of those handshakes and smiles make for wonderful propaganda for those dictators and only despair for the people trapped and imprisoned under them.

It’s now at a point where the President’s, his administration’s and Congress’s latest moves are beginning to look and feel like threats to our very Republic.

Tens of thousands of Americans stood up in protest of these government actions on April 15th.  There was a time when the left wing used to call such dissent “the cornerstone of democracy”.  Yet, a White House spokesman has now called these tax day protests “unhealthy”.

Unhealthy?

That’s a more apt description for the trillions of dollars in legislation that is coming down the pike like an express train.

Do I sound angry?

Everything that’s happening in government appears to be upside down.  Everything that has defined the glory of America has been reversed by words of criticism an appeasement spoken by America’s new President. Everything this country was founded on – a small government that is of the people, by the people and for the people – has been reversed to a big government of the government and for the government.

Forget all the polls.  Take a good hard look at what’s happening.

Our country and our future stand in the balance.
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Mary Laney is a regular columnist for the Chicago Daily Observer

Photo Russian Czar Nicholas II, left, and his son Prince Alexei sawing wood to heat their quarters in Siberia in 1918.