Political bucket list

THE LIST: Which do you not like?

I just received this from a good friend and want to share with you...

I like the way this is phrased because it recognizes that the political class are "bought and paid for". I believe that the basic premise is correct: If you listen to Trump, he is hitting many of the hot buttons of the electorate. But you have to listen to him and not be distracted by his showmanship (which is designed to give him free publicity since he's paying for his own campaign).

I like the list of 13 things that I, as a senior American citizen, want.

Trump is at least talking about issues that most Americans are concerned about. My mantra about Trump is this: We are usually in agreement with most of what he says but wish someone else was saying it. We are getting older and our tickers aren't what they used to be ... so here is Our Special Bucket List for 2016 ....

HERE IS WHAT WE WANT...

1. Hillary: held accountable for her previous wrongs!

2. Put "GOD" back in America !!!

3. Borders: Closed or tightly guarded!

4. Congress: On the same retirement & healthcare plans as everybody else.

5. Congress: Obey its own laws NOW!

6. Language: English only!

7. Culture: Constitution and the Bill of Rights!

8. Drug Free: Mandatory Drug Screening before & during Welfare!

9. Freebies: NONE to Non-Citizens!

10. Budget: Balance the damn thing!

11. Foreign Countries: Stop giving them our money! Charge them for our help! We need it here.

12. Fix the TAX CODE!

And most of all.

13. "RESPECT OUR MILITARY AND OUR FLAG!!"

We the people are coming! Only 86% will send this on. Should be a 100%.

What will you do?

New Philadelphia Property Tax Increase For Fire Station

      I don’t know how to say this graciously but everybody who lives in New Philadelphia is going to be hit with another property tax.  This one is for a new fire station.  It sounds like a good deal, especially if you listen to the fire chief, mayor, safety director, the majority of city council, and the rest of the ignorant people who are willing to toss your tax money down a rat hole.

Consider this.  Jim Parish, the New Philadelphia Fire Chief, wants a new fire station.  The old one, according to Parish, is on its last legs, about to fall into its own basement.  The solution is to build a new one.  Unfortunately, there isn’t enough money to make the repairs needed to fix the present fire station, it has been getting worse over the years, evidently because nobody cared enough to do the routine maintenance necessary to keep the building in useable condition.  Oh, yeah, there is also the new fire truck which was purchased a few years ago whose weight is putting more strain of the floor, bending the steel beams, says the fire chief.

And then, the argument goes, the City did buy some property on Front Street because, well, it was for sale and what the heck, well, it was for sale.  There were no plans on what to do with it, but, well, it was for sale.

What we need, it has been decided, is a new fire station, and since we have the property already, let’s build one.  But, we need the money, five million dollars to be inexact.  You see, this is a guess.  Nobody knows what the cost is going to be.  There have been no plans considered.  That’s right, no plans.  No architect’s drawings, no engineering studies.  No builder’s bids, not even an estimate.  Nobody, nobody knows what the cost of a new fire station will be.  The only thing we really know about it is the administration wants it, majority of city council is willing to give them the money, which the City doesn’t have, to build it.

To get the money, city council wants to put a one-mil levy on the November ballot.  Tonight, July 13, at 7:30, City Council will consider a resolution to do just that, put a 25-year, five million (5,000,000) dollar bond levy on the November ballot.  With interest added on, the levy will cost the City eight million (8,000,000) dollars over the 25-year life of the bond.  That will add three hundred eighteen thousand (318,000) dollars to City expenses over each of the 25 years.

So who is going to pay that bill?  The residents and business owners in New Philadelphia.  If you own a home or other property  here, rent property here, have a business here, you will pick up the bill for this tax increase. 

And, if this levy passes, the tax increase will be added on to this year’s real estate taxes (2015) which will come due in 2016.

So tonight, starting at 7:30, City Council will debate adding a five million dollar debt to the New Philadelphia budget for 25 years, to pay for a project not yet approved, not yet defined, not yet understood, one without even an estimate of what the actual cost will be.

This is a prime example of what an uncontrolled, incompetent, irresponsible government body can, and will, do, if the public does not get involved.  If you can, show up tonight in City Council chambers and present your opinion  on this issue.  At the very least call your Councilmen, and women, and let them know of your opposition to this madness.

If you do not get involved the madness will continue and you, as a New Philadelphia citizen, will be the one to suffer.

New Philadelphia Contact Numbers

Dave Johnson                330-364-4844                    Mayor

Sam Hitchcock              330-340-7910                    Council President

Cheryl Ramos               330-364-7695                    Ward 1 Councilman

John Zucal                    330-340-6314                    Ward 2 Councilman

Daren Lautenshleger    330-364-2317                     Ward 3 Councilman

Rob Maurer                  330-340-0658                     Ward 4 Councilman

Sandy Cox                    330-364-6469                     Councilman at Large

Dan Lanzer                   330-447-2883                     Councilman at Large

Winnie Walker             330-339-6910                     Councilman at Large

Get involved, make the calls.  And when you do call, remember that there are six people you should speak with:  the mayor, council president, your ward councilman, and the three Councilmen at Large.

Europe surrenders to Muslim domination

 

 

“In a generation or two, the US will ask itself: who lost Europe?”

 

This is the speech of Geert Wilders, Chairman, Party for Freedom, Member of Parliament, the Netherlands, at the Four Seasons Hotel, New York (formerly New Amsterdam), introducing an Alliance of Patriots and announcing the Facing Jihad Conference in Jerusalem:

 

Dear friends,

 

Thank you very much for inviting me.

 

I come to America with a mission. All is not well in the old world. There is a tremendous danger looming, and it is very difficult to be optimistic. We might be in the final stages of the Islamization of Europe . This not only is a clear and present danger to the future of Europe itself, it is a threat to America and the sheer survival of the West. The United States as the last bastion of Western civilization, facing an Islamic Europe .

 

First I will describe the situation on the ground in Europe. Then, I will say a few things about Islam. To close I will tell you about a meeting in Jerusalem .

 

The Europe you know is changing.

 

You have probably seen the landmarks. But in all of these cities, sometimes a few blocks away from your tourist destination, there is another world. It is the world of the parallel society created by  *Muslim mass-migration*.

 

All throughout Europe a new reality is rising: entire Muslim neighborhoods where very few indigenous people reside or are even seen. And if they are, they might regret

 

it. This goes for the police as well. It's the world of head scarves, where women walk around in figureless tents, with baby strollers and a group of children. Their husbands, or slaveholders if you prefer, walk three steps ahead. With mosques on many street corners. The shops have signs you and I cannot read. You will be hard-pressed to find any economic activity. These are Muslim ghettos controlled by religious fanatics. These are Muslim neighborhoods, and they are mushrooming in every city across Europe . These are the building-blocks for territorial control of increasingly larger portions of Europe , street by street, neighborhood by neighborhood, city by city.

 

There are now thousands of mosques throughout Europe . With larger congregations than there are in churches. And in every European city there are plans to build super-mosques that will dwarf every church in the region. Clearly, the signal is: we rule.

 

Many European cities are already one-quarter Muslim: just take Amsterdam , Marseille and Malmo in Sweden. In many cities the majority of the under-18 population is Muslim. Paris is now surrounded by a ring of Muslim neighborhoods. Mohammed is the most popular name among boys in many cities.

In some elementary schools in Amsterdam the farm can no longer be mentioned, because that would also mean mentioning the pig, and that would be an insult to Muslims.

 

Many state schools in Belgium and Denmark only serve halal food to all pupils. In once-tolerant Amsterdam, gays are beaten up almost exclusively by Muslims. Non-Muslim women routinely hear 'whore, whore.’  Satellite dishes are not pointed to local TV stations, but to stations in the country of origin.

 

In France school teachers are advised to avoid authors deemed offensive to Muslims, including Voltaire and Diderot; the same is increasingly true of Darwin . The history of the Holocaust can no longer be taught because of Muslim sensitivity.

 

In England, Sharia courts are now officially part of the British legal system..Many neighborhoods in France are no-go areas for women without head scarves. Last week a man almost died after being beaten up by Muslims in Brussels , because he was drinking during the Ramadan.

 

Jews are fleeing France in record numbers, on the run for the worst wave of anti-Semitism since World War II. French is now commonly spoken on the streets of Tel Aviv and Netanya, Israel. I could go on forever with stories like this. Stories about Islamization.

 

A total of fifty-four million Muslims now live in Europe. San Diego University recently calculated that a staggering 25 percent of the population in Europe will be Muslim just 12 years from now. Bernhard Lewis has predicted a Muslim majority by the end of this century.

 

Now these are just numbers. And the numbers would not be threatening if the Muslim-immigrants had a strong desire to assimilate. But there are few signs of that. The Pew

 

Research Center reported that half of French Muslims see their loyalty to Islam as greater than their loyalty to France . One-third of French Muslims do not object to suicide attacks. The British Centre for Social Cohesion reported that one-third of British Muslim students are in favor of a worldwide caliphate. Muslims demand what they call 'respect'. And this is how we give them respect.

 

We haveMuslim official state holidays. The Christian-Democratic attorney general is willing to accept Sharia in the Netherlands if there is a Muslim majority. We have cabinet members with passports from Morocco and Turkey .

 

Muslim demands are supported by unlawful behavior, ranging from petty crimes and random violence, for example against ambulance workers and bus drivers, to small-scale riots. Paris has seen its uprising in the low-income suburbs, the banlieus. I call the perpetrators 'settlers'. Because that is what they are. They do not come to integrate into our societies, they come to integrate our society into their Dar-al-Islam. Therefore, they are settlers.

 

Much of this street violence I mentioned is directed exclusively against non-Muslims, forcing many native people to leave their neighborhoods, their cities, their countries. Moreover, Muslims are now a swing vote not to be ignored.

 

The second thing you need to know is the importance of Mohammed the prophet. His behavior is an example to all Muslims and cannot be criticized. Now, if Mohammed had been a man of peace, let us say like Gandhi and Mother Theresa wrapped in one, there would be no problem. But Mohammed was a warlord, a mass murderer, a pedophile, and had several marriages - at the same time. Islamic tradition tells us how he fought in battles, how he had his enemies murdered and even had prisoners of war executed. Mohammed himself slaughtered the Jewish tribe of Banu Qurayza. If it is good for Islam, it is good. If it is bad for Islam, it is bad.

 

Let no one fool you about Islam being a religion. Sure, it has a god, and a here-after, and 72 virgins. But, in its essence, Islam is a political ideology. It is a system that lays down detailed rules for society and the life of every person. Islam wants to dictate every aspect of life. Islam means 'submission'. Islam is not compatible with freedom and democracy, because what it strives for is Sharia. If you want to compare Islam to anything, compare it to communism or national-socialism, these are all totalitarian ideologies.

 

Now you know why Winston Churchill called Islam 'the most retrograde force in the world', and why he compared Mein Kampf to the Quran. The public has wholeheartedly accepted the Palestinian narrative, and sees Israel as the aggressor. I have lived in this country and visited it dozens of times. I support Israel . First, because it is the Jewish homeland after two thousand years of exile up to and including Auschwitz , second

because it is a democracy, and third because Israel is our first line of defense.

 

This tiny country is situated on the fault line of jihad, frustrating Islam's territorial advance. Israel is facing the front lines of jihad, like Kashmir , Kosovo, the Philippines , Southern Thailand, Darfur in Sudan , Lebanon , and Aceh in Indonesia . Israel is simply in the way. The same way West-Berlin was during the Cold War.

 

The war against Israel is not a war against Israel . It is a war against the West. It is jihad. Israel is simply receiving the blows that are meant for all of us. If there would have been no Israel , Islamic imperialism would have found other venues to release its energy and its desire for conquest. Thanks to Israeli parents who send their children to the army and lay awake at night, parents in Europe and America can sleep well and dream, unaware of the dangers looming.

 

Many in Europe argue in favor of abandoning Israel in order to address the grievances of our Muslim minorities. But if Israel were, God forbid, to go down, it would not bring any solace to the West It would not mean our Muslim minorities would all of a sudden change their behavior, and accept our values. On the contrary, the end of Israel would give enormous encouragement to the forces of Islam. They would, and rightly so, see the demise of Israel as proof that the West is weak, and doomed.

 

The end of Israel would not mean the end of our problems with Islam, but only the beginning. It would mean the start of the final battle for world domination. If they can get Israel, they can get everything. 

 

So-called journalists volunteer to label any and all critics of Islamization as a 'right-wing extremists' or 'racists.'  In my country, the Netherlands, 60 percent of the population now sees the mass immigration of Muslims as the number one policy mistake since World War II. And another 60 percent sees Islam as the biggest threat. Yet there is a danger greater danger than terrorist attacks, the scenario of America as the last man standing. The lights may go out in Europe faster than you can imagine.

 

An Islamic Europe means a Europe without freedom and democracy, an economic wasteland, an intellectual nightmare, and a loss of military might for America - as its allies will turn into enemies, enemies with atomic bombs. With an Islamic Europe , it would be up to America alone to preserve the heritage of Rome , Athens and Jerusalem .

Dear friends, liberty is the most precious of gifts. My generation never had to fight for this freedom, it was offered to us on a silver platter, by people who fought for it with their lives. All throughout Europe American cemeteries remind us of the young boys who never made it home, and whose memory we cherish. My generation does not own this freedom; we are merely its custodians. We can only hand over this hard won liberty to Europe 's children in the same state in which it was offered to us. We cannot strike a deal with mullahs and imams. Future generations would never forgive us. We cannot squander our liberties. We simply do not have the right to do so.”

---

 

“In twenty years there will be enough Muslim voters in the U.S. to elect the President.”

 

Every loyal U.S. citizen should be required to read and understand this, but with ACLU, there is no way this will be widely publicized, unless each of us send it on! This is your chance to make a difference...

 

(Or it is already too late, since we already have a Muslim president --  because they didn’t want a Mormon in the White House…?!)

Private Bernard Sterno's Jump on D-Day, June 6, 1944

Bernard Sterno enlisted in the United States Army on February 3, 1942.  Originally from Georgia, he had moved to New York in search of work.  New York was not what he thought it would be, so when the war started, he volunteered.  His objective was to get into the paratroopers.  He was 19 years old.  This is his story of D-Day, June 6, 1944.

 

 

     Just before D-Day, they sent us to a marshaling area.  We were held behind barbed wire, kind of like a prison camp, almost. They had guards outside. You weren't allowed to communicate with anybody.  You weren't even allowed to talk with the cooks.  When you'd go through the mess line, when they'd put the food in your tray, there was no conversation.  You'd say thank you, or talk about the food, or something like that. They were very careful.  The NCOs and officers were always there.  There were armed guards on the fence area.  They didn't want you to go out of there.  There was no chance to talk to anybody.
     They took us in for a briefing before we made our jump.  They had a sand table made just like the area we were going to jump into.  They gave us large scale maps of where we were going to jump.  We were a couple of days getting briefed, where we were going to jump, what we were going to do.  The plan was that we were to jump near St. Martin-De-Varreville.  We were supposed to attack some barracks that were there, and round up all the Germans.  After that, we were to head down the causeway and keep it open so when the ground troops got there, it would be a little easier for them.  Earlier we were told we had four gun installations to destroy, gun installations that could fire on people on the beach.  But, the next day when they briefed us on it, they said there were only two of them there.  The air corps knocked out a bunch of them the day before.
     They postponed D-Day one day because the weather was too rough.  Then the next day, it was it.  They had a meeting before dark and General Eisenhower came out and walked right among us.  It was very informal.  Usually, when a general comes up they have you at attention. But as soon as Eisenhower walked up, the company commander was briefed.  He said, "At rest."  That meant you could stand around.   Eisenhower came browsing through us, talking to us, joking with us, asking questions, where we were from, what did we do in civilian life, and things like that.
     After he left, they took us, and all our heavy equipment, down to the C-47s, and we loaded up.  We took off before dark on the fifth of June.  I don't know how long it took us to get into formation.  I was sitting next to one guy and we got tired and fell asleep.  It was dark then, we were still flying.  When I woke up and looked down, I could see a light flashing up at us.  We were over the English Channel.  It must have been a submarine or something like that that was flashing.

The next thing I knew, I could hear what sounded like a bunch of gravel on the plane.  I could see streaks of tracer bullets coming up from the ground.  I said, "Look there.  It looks like tracer bullet fire or something."  The guy next to me said, "It's just fire from the exhaust of the engines."

     Then we started rocking.  They told us to stand up and hook up and we parachuted into Normandy at night.
We were scattered all over and mixed in with the 82nd Airborne.  It was just all mixed up that first night.  Every time another plane would come over the Germans would start shooting.  We got as close to them as we could and threw some hand grenades at them.  That quieted some of them down.  When it got daylight and we started seeing some of our own people.  We stayed together and when we ran into groups of Germans, we'd get rid of them.  Some of them would run and roll.  It was nip and tuck.
     When we came to a village, we hit it along with other companies.  We were all mixed up with the 82nd Airborne.  We were just disorganized.  After a couple of days we all got together as people wandered in.  Some of the men landed further away from our objective than we did.  One plane load landed in the channel and were never seen again.  They were from Company A, First Battalion, 502 Parachute Regiment.  Their company commander was on the plane that went down.
I don't know how many days we were there.  After the 10th, we were supposed to go and take Carentan.  The whole company slept in a barn that night.  The next morning we started out toward the open causeway.  We had to rush in bunches and hit the ground and roll because the Germans were shooting at us and it was all in the open.  We'd go across one of those bridges, hit the shoulder of the road, and lay down low.  Some of the bridges were blown out.  We strung ropes across them and pulled ourselves across the water on the ropes.  We were all day long there. 
     When it got night, a dog-gone German dive bomber came over and was firing bullets.  He was hitting the paved road and everybody there.  He knocked several people of G Company out.  He just got them.  A British night fighter came in behind him and knocked him down.  The dive bomber looked like a torch in the air.  I could see it going over and hit the ground over on the other side of Carentan.  You could see it burning all night long.

     When it got daylight, we were out on the end of the bridge. They sent Company H up ahead because the other companies had already taken a beating.  There was a big steel gate there and they pulled the gate open.  They needed somebody to go so they said Company H, that was our company.  Our commander says, "Come on Company H, let's do it."
     The battalion commander, who was Colonel Cole, Robert Cole, from Texas, was standing there in the bald open with a .45 pistol on him.  Our company commander was talking in a little whisper, and Colonel Cole said, "Damn it, Simmons, those Heinies know you're here.  There's no sense whispering."
     Our company commander, Cecil L. Simmons, was from Grand Rapids, Michigan.  He was a captain.  After the war, he became the head of the Michigan National Guard and made brigadier general.  I've seen him twice since then.  I saw him at the Orlando reunion about 15 or 20 years ago and again when we were in Holland in 1989, at the celebration they had in memory of the liberation of Eindhoven.  That's the place where we jumped in Holland.  I knew the Germans were sitting there waiting, because all day long we had been trying to get to them.  When we started to cross over a hedge, all hell broke loose.  I mean, they just opened up.
     We sent one patrol out across an open field to a farm house. No sooner had they gone out, I was just getting ready to go over the hedge, and, man, the bullets and crap started flying.  We laid down in a ditch.  The rest of the battalion was up and down the ditch too, just pinned down.
     It was just starting to get daylight when I noticed artillery shells started going into them, our artillery.  I said, "The next artillery man I meet I want to shake his hand."  Those heavy aerial bursts would burst over the foxholes and trenches the Germans were in.  They would explode and hit them even though there were in slit trenches.  They kept pouring that on them.
     Finally the Colonel said, "When the smoke gets here," we would fire smoke shells which would hinder the Germans' visibility, "I want you to fix bayonets and charge."  I couldn't believe it.  But, sure enough, why, I looked over and saw Colonel Cole leading the dog-gone battalion.  He was the one that gave the order.  And then the rest of us, we jumped up and started going.  I went about a hundred or a hundred and fifty feet and I was looking for an German to shoot at.  One had his head right up there in the slit trench, I could see his helmet.  I aimed at it and got him.  He had a P-38 pistol and I wanted that son-of-a-gun.  I was laying on my stomach so I wouldn't get hit.  I reached up and got my trench knife out of my boot to cut the pistol loose.  I went to cut it, and my hand just jolted like that, and blood started to come out both sides of my finger.  A bullet had gone through my finger just as neat as anything.  I cut the pistol loose and crawled over to a more secure spot.
     A medic happened to come by, Land, was his name, a guy from Tampa, Florida.  Zephyr Hills, I think.  He saw my hand bleeding and he said, "Let me bandage that."  I said, "Aw, it's not bothering me at all.  It's just throbs a little."
He said, "Yeah, I want to bandage it."

     He bandaged it up okay.  He had my whole hand just wrapped with the darn thing.  Then we moved on forward to where the Germans were.  Colonel Cole looked over at me.  He remembered me, and he said, "Sterno, get back there and get some more medical attention.  You can't sit up here with that."
     I said, "It don't bother me."
     He said, "Get back," and I said, "Yes, sir."
I went back and found a friend of mine, who was a sergeant. We used to go into London together.  He was on his back holding his stomach.  I crawled over to him, and I don't know whether it was a shell, or a bullet, or what hit him, but some of his intestines were showing.  I heard somebody grunting and groaning and looked over and it was our medic.  He got one in his back.  He died right there. I got his first aid kit and started putting sulfathilamide powder and sulfa on the sergeant's wound with big, heavy pieces of gauze.  I gave him some morphine shots, from the little tubes of morphine they issued us.  I squirted that into him and he felt better.
     Vehicles started coming up because they patched up the bridge.  One weapons carrier came driving in with more ammunition for us and they used that to pick up wounded.  There were a couple of medics on it.  They came over to where we were and got the wounded.  I told them, "There's one over here,” and they got the sergeant on a stretcher and got him out of there.  Another guy there was on his back.  His name was Reiley, and he was shot.  A bullet went completely through his chest.
     He said, "I can't breath, I can't breathe."  He was begging me to shoot him.  I thought he must be in pretty bad shape.  I said, "No, I can't do that."  A couple of medics came up and set him against a tree.  They saw there was not much they could do with him.  Later on, after a little more excitement, we found him on his back, dead.
     A lieutenant who was there said, "Get back.  You're wounded. We've got enough people here."  My hand didn't bother me.  It was just because the darned hand was bandaged all the way, but I went back.  I really wasn't hurt bad.
I got back to the trench we started from, and there were three or four wounded people in there.  One guy, I'll never forget, had a handlebar mustache.  When Eisenhower was walking among us before we jumped that night, he said, "What did you do in civilian life?"  He said he was a waiter or something.  Eisenhower said, "I think he was a pirate, the way he looks."  He was joking humorously.  But he was there.  He apparently had been wounded, he had his arm in a sling leaning back smoking a cigarette.
     I kept hearing these mortar shells.  I thought they were 88s at first.  I figured they were mortar shells, because you could hear pumph, pumph, and a short while thereafter, you'd hear the things whiz over.  They started hitting close to us.  I crawled into a little trench that was there.  It sounded like one hit real close to us and it felt like a board hitting my butt, tore my groin up a little bit.  My ears were ringing and when everything cleared, I could hear this one guy saying, "My eye, my eye."  His right eye was completely torn out.  I said, "Just be thankful you have the other one."  I put a piece of gauze and bandage on it for him.  Another guy, he had a submachine gun, was sitting there, his head lolling back and forth, blood coming our of both his nose and ears.  I don't know how he turned out.  But the guy who had the handlebar mustache, I wouldn't have recognized him if it hadn't been for that.  All that was left of his face was from the nose down.  The rest of it, it had shaved his head completely off, in two.
     I was hurt then, really hurt.  I could hardly stand.  I could get up and limp.  I didn't know how bad I was hurt.  I had blood all over me, and my hip was aching.  I had shrapnel in my groin, my butt.  So I crawled on back to the iron gate.  I got back across the bridge and saw this little foxhole and got down in it.
There were other people back there who were wounded, and some who hadn't got up to the front yet.  The lieutenant from our company was there in a little foxhole about 10 feet from me.  All of a sudden, boom, it was a small caliber shell, I think a 55-mm mortar that the Germans had, that hit right between us.  It grazed my neck enough to make it bleed.  That didn't hurt bad, but it also go me in the chest.  There's still a little piece shrapnel in there now.  The lieutenant caught most of it in his arm.  I heard him over there moaning.
     Finally, they had a truce.  They told all walking wounded, “If you can walk, get up and get to the rear."  We couldn't have any weapons or anything.  Our supply sergeant was there and he said, "I'll take care of that P-38 for you."  I said, "Okay."  I asked him later on back in England what happened to it.  "Well, I went across a river and lost it," he said.  I don't know what he did with it.  So they sent me back to England.
     Carentan was taken on June 11, 1944.

The Gun Is Civilization

"The Gun Is Civilization"  

            By  Maj. L. Caudill USMC (Ret)
     Human beings only have two ways to deal with one another: reason and force.

If you want me to do something for you, you have a choice of either convincing me via argument, or force me to do your bidding under threat of force. Every human interaction falls into one of those two categories, without exception. Reason or force, that's it .
     
In a truly moral and civilized society, people exclusively interact through persuasion. Force has no place as a valid method of social interaction, and the only thing  that removes force from the menu is the personal firearm, as paradoxical as it may sound to some.
     
When I carry a gun, you cannot deal with me by force. You have  to use reason and try to persuade me, because I have a way to negate  your threat or employment of force. The gun is the only personal weapon that puts a 100-pound  woman on equal footing with a 220-pound mugger, a 75-year old retiree on equal footing with a 19-year old gang banger, and a single guy on equal footing with a carload of drunk guys with baseball bats. The gun removes the disparity in  physical strength, size, or numbers between a potential attacker and a  defender.
     
There are plenty of people who consider the gun as the source of bad force equations. These are the people who think that we'd be more civilized if all guns were removed from society,  because a firearm  makes it easier for a [armed] mugger to do his job. That, of course, is only true if the mugger's potential victims are mostly disarmed either by choice or by legislative fiat - it has no validity when most of a mugger's potential  marks are armed.
    
People who argue for the banning of arms ask for automatic rule by the young, the strong, and the many, and that's the exact opposite of  a civilized society. A mugger, even an armed one, can only make a successful living in a society where the state has granted him a force monopoly .
  
Then there's the argument that the gun makes confrontations lethal that otherwise would only result in injury. This argument is fallacious in several ways. Without guns involved, confrontations are won by the physically superior party inflicting overwhelming injury on the loser.
     
People who think that fists, bats, sticks, or stones don't constitute lethal force, watch too much TV , where people take beatings and come out of it with a bloody lip at worst. The fact that the gun makes lethal force easier, works solely in favor of the weaker defender, not the stronger attacker. If both are armed, the field is level.
     
The gun is the only weapon that's as lethal in the hands of an octogenarian as it is in the hands of a weight lifter. It simply would not work as well as a force equalizer if it wasn't both lethal and easily  employable.
     
When I carry a gun, I don't do so because I am looking for a fight, but because I'm looking to be left alone. The gun at my side means that I cannot be forced, only persuaded . I don't carry it because I'm  afraid, but because it enables me to be unafraid. It doesn't limit the actions of those who would interact with me through reason, only the actions of those who would do so by force. It removes force from the equation.. And  that's why carrying a gun is a civilized act!!
          
So the greatest civilization is one where all citizens are equally armed and can only be persuaded, never forced !!

New Philadelphia, Ohio, Fiscal Irresponsibility Grows

Politics goes on.  It has always been biased, its objectives to bring power, influence, financial gain to those who participate but only if done on the right side.  Integrity, honesty, responsibility to country, state, city, and the citizens who reside there is a thing of the past.  Good stewardship to citizens is dead. 

On the national scene we are governed by a president who is of doubtful citizenship, Barack Obama, who is unfit to serve in that office because of his inability, or refusal, to prove his citizenship, has disregarded the United States Constitution and Declaration of Independence, has openly declared his preference of Communism over a republican type of government, and is supported by Congress which follows his lead without question. 

New Philadelphia has watched the debacle in Washington and learned its lesson well.  The present circumstances could be the basis for an Orwellian book titled “The Day the Idiots Took the Asylum”.  Consider the recent past.   New Philadelphia is in serious financial trouble.  The mayor, Michael Taylor, for whatever reason, we’re not privy to what, resigned half way through his second term effective the end of December last year.  That, of course left the city with no mayor, a situation that could only be remedied by the Tuscarawas Democratic Central Committee meeting and appointing a replacement to fill out the last two years of Taylor’s unfinished term.  Meet they did and on January 9, by a vote of nine of the 16 eligible committee members, the Democratic Central Committee elected David Johnson Mayor of the City of New Philadelphia, a remarkable choice.

Johnson has had experience in city positions in the past, City Council President and City Treasurer, both jobs as the result of successful election bids.  As city treasurer Johnson did not finish his four-year term but resigned after a state audit of the city’s books.  His experience as treasurer was marred by a lack of presenting to city council monthly reports on the state of the city’s finances, as required by law, and difficulty in balancing the city’s books with statements from banks in which city funds are deposited.  This is spooky as a major part of the mayor’s job is administering the city budget.

One of the first decisions made by Johnson as mayor of New Philadelphia, was to express opposition to retaining Regional Income Tax Agency (RITA) to administer, and enforce, New Philadelphia’s income taxes.  RITA is an agency established by the state under the Ohio Revised Code, Chapter 167, to provide assistance to cities in Ohio with their tax collection.  RITA does it all.  It calculates taxes due, checks to make sure full payment is made, goes after delinquent tax payers, or non-payers as the case may be.  RITA will represent the city in actions which require going to court to collect taxes not paid. 

This assistance does not come for free.  RITA charges two-and-a-half percent of the total amount of taxes collected, for an estimated cost of $151,000 a year in comparison to the income tax office current operating budget of $240,000 per annum, an annual saving in excess of $90,000.

Mayor Johnson doesn’t like this for a couple of reasons.

He says that it could cost jobs, and the city should be hiring people instead of laying them off.  Currently there are four people working in the tax office, an administrator who was hired as a temporary employee and knows it, two full time clerks and a part-timer.  One full-time clerk is retiring, the part-timer will probably be let go no matter what happens. 

Johnson’s second complaint is that there aren’t many cities getting involved with RITA.  I don’t know where he got his figures.  Since 2008, 92 municipalities have signed on with RITA.  To name a few there are Willoughby, Kent, Gahanna, Loveland, Cleveland Heights, North Ridgeville, and Painesville.  Conversations with communities using RITA over a number of years give RITA excellent ratings including the cities of Freemont, Lyndhurst, Middlesburg Heights, Streetsboro, Tallmadge, and Broadview Heights.

It has been rumored that there are taxpayers in New Philadelphia, some of whom are major businesses within the city, who are not paying their taxes at all, and the money is being lost to the city because the city does not actively pursue and prosecute them.  RITA will seek these people out, prosecute them if necessary to collect back taxes, increase New Philadelphia’s revenue, and do it with a $90,000 savings to city expenses.

And Mayor Johnson doesn’t seem to get it.

What’s coming next?  Executive orders from Mayor Johnson?

 

Obama And The Muslim Heritage In The United States

 


 Barack Obama, during a speech in Cairo, said: "I know, too, that Islam has always been a part of America's history."

AN AMERICAN CITIZEN'S RESPONSE.

Dear Mr. Obama:

Have you ever seen a Muslim hospital?

Have you heard a Muslim orchestra?

Have you seen a Muslim band march in a parade?

Have you witnessed a Muslim act of charity?

Have you seen Muslims shake hands with a Muslim Girl Scout?

Have you seen a Muslim do anything that contributes positively to the American way of life.

The answer is no, you have not. Just ask yourself why?

Were those Muslims that were in America when the Pilgrims first landed?  No, they were Native American Indians.

Were those Muslims that celebrated the first Thanksgiving day?  No yet again.  Those were Pilgrims and Native American Indians.

Can you show me one Muslim signature on the: United States Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, of the Bill of Rights?  No, you cannot.

Did Muslims fight for this country's freedom from England?  No.

Did Muslims fight during the Civil War to free the slaves in America?  No, they did not.  In fact, Muslims remain the largest traffickers In human slavery to this day.  Your own half-brother, a devoutly radical extremist Muslim, still advocates slavery himself, even though Muslims of Arabic descent refer to black Muslims as "pug nosed slaves."

Says a lot of what the Muslim world really thinks of-your family's "rich Islamic heritage," doesn't it, Mr. Obama?

Where were Muslims during the Civil Rights era of this country? Not present.

There are no pictures or media accounts of Muslims walking side by side with Martin Luther King, Jr., or helping to advance the cause of Civil Rights.

Where were Muslims during this country's Woman's Suffrage era?  Again, not present.  In fact, devout Muslims demand that women are subservient to men in Islamic culture.  In fact, women are often beaten for not wearing the 'hajib' or for talking to a man who is not a direct family- member of their husband. Yep, Muslims are all for women's rights, aren't they?

Where were Muslims during World War II?  They were aligned with Adolf Hitler and Mussolini, and were murdering and looting our stranded and wounded aviators and soldiers in the deserts of North Africa.  The Muslim grand mufti himself met with Adolf Hitler, reviewed the troops, and accepted support from the Nazi's in killing Jews.

Finally, Mr. Obama, where were Muslims on Sept 11, 2001?  If they weren't flying planes full of innocent people into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, or a field in Pennsylvania, killing nearly 3,000 people on our own soil, they were rejoicing, not only in the Middle East, but in US streets as well as many other western democracies which have allowed them to enter illegally.

No one can dispute the pictures shown from all parts of the Muslim world revealing Muslims celebrating, on CNN, Fox News, MSNBC and other cable news networks on that infamous day.  Strangely, the very "moderate" Muslims who's arses you bent over backwards to kiss in Cairo, Egypt on June 4th were stone cold silent post 9-11  To many Americans, their silence has meant approval for the acts of that day.

Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot to mention the Barbary Pirates,  They were Muslims too.

And remember November 5, 2009 and the slaughter of American soldiers at Fort Hood by a Muslim major who, as a doctor and a psychiatrist, was supposed to be counseling soldiers returning from battle in Iraq and Afghanistan..

We must also add the Boston Marathon bombings and the killing and beheading of a soldier on the street in London.

That, Mr. Obama is the "Muslim heritage" in America.

Zucal/Lautenschleger Retroactive Pay Increases Endanger New Philadelphia Budget

       City Council, under the direction of John Zucal, is pushing hard to pass a piece of legislation which will increase the salary of the Fire Chief by almost double his current salary.  The chief, by the way, hasn’t objected.  But there is a problem or two, which Mr. Zucal has not brought before council.

First, what is the cost of this pay increase going to be and how will the city be able to pay for it?  The cost is unknown.  After repeated requests from council members and others, Zucal is unable, or unwilling to disclose the actual cost of such a pay raise.

Second, where is the money coming from to pay for such an exorbitant increase?  Zucal has this one figured out in that he wants to rob the ambulance fund, which is mandated to pay for equipment purchases and repairs plus overtime due hourly fire fighters who man the ambulances, not for salaried fire chiefs.

Third, how much will the Police Chief’s salary be raised, or the Service Director, or the Water Department Supervisor, or…well, you get the idea.

As far as the money is concerned, there’s no problem according to Zucal and Councilman Lautenschleger.

Lautenschleger isn’t concerned about financial problems until the end of 2014.  That should put our minds at ease, unless you live to 2015.  Isn’t this a lot like the wife coming in and saying,  “We have a hundred dollars in the grocery fund money to last into next month so why not buy a new plasma television for six hundred dollars today?  I mean we have it now and we’ll worry about next month when it arrives.”  Sounds a lot like the housing bubble that broke the economy a few years ago.  Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.  You remember them and how buying homes without being able to make the down payment, let alone keep the mortgage payments, caused home foreclosures on a scale not seen in most people’s life time.  Cities are no different than personal finances.  The message here is if you don’t have the money, or another source of income, don’t spend money you don’t have.  If you do, it will always lead to eventual bankruptcy.

So where is the money coming from to pay for pay increases?  Actually, there is no problem here according to Zucal.  The Fire Chief’s salary increase won’t cost the citizen anything.  After all, he says, the money will come out of the ambulance fund.  Wait a minute.  Where did the ambulance fund come from?  If you guessed that it came from fees charged by the Fire Department for ambulance services, you are correct.  If there is enough money to pay for wage increases in the fund, why does the Fire Department want ambulance service rates increased by some 30%?  What am I missing here?  If Zucal and the Fire Chief say the ambulance fund is going to cover the costs, where is the revenue from increased ambulance fees going to go?

Even more questionable, if there isn’t a financial crisis in the city now, why was it necessary for Zucal and Lautenschleger to push so hard for a .75-percent income tax increase on last November’s ballot?  As you may remember, the citizenry decisively defeated that one.

A major concern, ignored by salary increase advocates, is where do the increases stop?  The reason given for the Fire Chief being granted an exorbitant wage raise is that he should be paid more than those fire fighters he supervises.  Wait a minute.  How far will this logic go?

If the Fire Chief is paid $90,000 a year, what about the Safety Director?  By law the Safety Director is the administrative head of the Police and Fire Departments.  Therefore, the Safety Director, following the logic Zucal uses to provide the Fire Chief with a salary of eighty three thousand dollars a year, that is the Fire Chief should have a salary in excess of what fire fighters make, the safety director should be salaried for at least $95,000 a year.  That being the case, the Mayor, considering that both the Safety Director and Fire Chief would be earning more than he does, and he does supervise both, he should receive a salary of at least $100,000 annually.

One more thing to take into consideration is the not mentioned by proponents of this legislation is that Zucal wants these pay increases be made retroactive to January 1, 2013.  Anybody out there really think we can afford this?

Zucal’s push at this time is to get the third reading of the legislation, which would give the Fire Chief the largest salary of any New Philadelphia city employee, made on the floor this year, in hopes of getting it passed before the balance of power shifts with the seating of Councilperson Cheryl Ramos in Ward One.  For this reason, he has called a special council meeting on Wednesday, December 18.  Call your Councilman and ask him to vote against this ill-advised legislation.  Zucal doesn’t know what the final cost of this action will be.  Nobody knows where the funds to finance it are coming from.  A tax increase will unquestionably be asked for if the legislation is passed.

Call your councilman and ask that he does not vote to pass any legislation which will raise taxes because of salary increases.

Councilman Proposes Raiding Ambulance Fund To Pay New Philadelphia Fire Chief

       Well, Zucal seems to be at it again.  I’m not sure where the Ward Two City Councilman comes up with his ideas, but this one, typical of how he operates in council, has some really strange twists.

Fire Chief Jim Parish was making a bundle of money as a fire fighter with the New Philadelphia Fire Department.  The base salary was good, somewhere around $50,000 a year.  The benefits, life and health insurance, overtime pay (paid at twice the regular hourly pay for any time over scheduled work time), uniform allowance, paid holidays, sick leave, added onto the base pay, increased take-home pay to more than $80,000 a year.  Life was good.

Then the chance for Parish to become Fire Chief raised its head.  Parish applied for the position.  He studied for the test, passed the examination, and won the appointment.  Low and behold, the advertised salary for the Fire Chief was, in reality, less than what a fireman could make when the overtime was included. 

Chief Parrish objected.  This was going to cut into his retirement so he strongly objected.

Councilman Zucal, who, at the time, was running for reelection and wooing the New Philadelphia city workers vote, took up his case.  Zucal proposed raising the Chief’s base salary to 85 to 90 thousand dollars a year, a figure that does not include the cost of benefits to which he would be entitled.  Parish and Zucal also asked that the Fire Chief be paid double overtime for any time worked over the standard forty hours.

How this raise was going to be paid for was brought up in the December 23 ad hoc committee chaired by Zucal, by Ms. Cox, Chairperson of the Finance Committee.  Cox asked Zucal what the costs would be to the City should Parrish be given the requested salary increase.  Zucal never provided an answer to her question, rather told her to “add it up yourself”.  When Cox persisted to ask for the financial effect on the city’s budget, a question to which Zucal obviously did not know the answer, he ended the discussion by shouting for her to “Be quiet!”

It was hoped, by those who were interested in raising the Chief’s salary, that a city income tax resolution which would increase the citizens tax burden by .75-percent , that was defeated in November’s election, would raise revenue to cover such items.  Its failure dashed such hopes.  But wait.  There was another plan waiting in the wings.

Plan two was to raise the cost of the New Philadelphia Fire Department’s Ambulance service.  With an increase of income from the city’s ambulance services, money could be taken from the ambulance fund to pay the Chief’s $40,000 pay raise.  Three types of services would be involved, each of which deals with life threatening events or accidents.  The increased costs to people using the Fire Department ambulances service would amount to nine-percent.  Furthermore, it is highly questionable that taking funds from the Ambulance Service to pay for the chief’s requested pay raise would pass legal scrutiny, let alone a moral evaluation.

This proposal, Resolution No. 31-2013, which was presented to City Council by Zucal under sponsorship of the Ambulance Committee, of which Zucal is a member.  By this action Zucal once again showed his ignorance of City Ordinances, his contempt of City Council, his disdain for the citizens of New Philadelphia.

You see, the Ambulance Committee is not even remotely connected to City Council.  It is an appointed advisory committee charged with making recommendations on the operations of the Fire Department Ambulance service.  It reports to the City Council, keeping them aware of daily operations, financial needs, equipment needs, and such other matters it deems important.  Mr. Zucal should know this.  If he doesn’t know the difference between a City Council Committee and an advisory committee appointed by Council for advisory purposes, which apparently he does not, he cannot responsibly fill his position on city council. He should either educate himself on the workings of city government or reevaluate the advisability of continuing his position as a ward councilman.

So here we have an interesting situation.  We have a fire chief who politicked for his job, got it, then complains that he is underpaid.  Get a life, Jim.  You chose the position.  You wanted it, you campaigned for it, and you got it.  Fulfill your commitment.  Live with it.