Off the Editor’s Desk – 4-1-2015
IT’S ABOUT TIME, HARRY REID LEAVES!
It’s good news for all of us with conservative leanings, that Harry Reid, the United States Senator from Nevada has announced that he will not seek another term. Reid, 75 has been a member of the senate for almost 30 years.
Reid is a name-caller. I find that if he does not agree with you and has a different opinion, he calls you a name. He called former First Lady Barbara Bush a name and he was called on the carpet for it, and he apologized. But saying something hurtful is like pulling the trigger on a gun. Once it’s out of the barrel, there is no recalling and saying I am sorry later, cannot undo the damage.
If you remember five years ago, Reid (then majority leader of the Senate) along with the head honcho of the House, Nancy Pelosi, stood in front of the news cameras pushing the Affordable Health Care Law by saying, “pass the bill, then read it to find out what is in it.” Since then, Obama signed the bill, but the Democrats’ control of the House was lost to the Republicans and last November the Republicans took over control of the Senate.
Maybe Reid sees the handwriting on the wall that his time is over. But in the statement from his office last Friday, he indicated that he would work to bring the Democratic Party back into power. Now that is what disturbs me. Are not our elected officials our servants? According to the Constitution the power rests with the people. The tenth amendment of the constitution states: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
The only things that the federal government should do for us, is protect us, deliver our mail, and keep their nose out of our business.
From what I can make out, Harry Reid started out with ordinary means, but over the years he has become a millionaire many times over. How did he do that? Was it because he was in office? He was in the real estate business and I read recently that he collected a $1.1 million windfall from a land sale though he didn’t personally own the property for the past three years. According to what I read, “Reid did not disclose to Congress an earlier sale in which he transferred his land to a company created by a friend and took a financial stake in the company.”
I have wondered for many years how a person who does not have a lot of money goes into public service, especially at Washington, D.C. and leaves with a boatload of money. No wonder Reid wants to get the power back.
It appears to me that not only Democrats, but also Republicans have also been at the harvest.
As I think back over the Presidents that have been in office during my lifetime, Richard Nixon comes foremost to mind. Let me go back over that list of presidents. Franklin Roosevelt had old family money. Harry Truman had none and left office that way. Truman had a sign on his desk that read: “The buck stops here.” Obama should find that sign.
Eisenhower, the general, served his country all his life. John F. Kennedy also had family money, as did Johnson. Then Nixon and Ford and Carter. I do not know how their finances were, but they retired to a plush life. Then Ronald Reagan, the actor who had his own money. Then came the first Bush, money made in oil and then Clinton. I wonder how he got rich. Both Bill and Hillary claim that when they left the White House in 2001, they were broke. But they had sufficient funds to buy a home in New York that was priced well above a million dollars. The younger Bush also had money, and then Obama, he made his by writing a book.
So, what do you think, are people seeking high office after the money, or are they just loyal Americans trying to do the right thing?
Justice Clarence Thomas recently stated: “We have overseen and sanctioned the growth of an administrative system that concentrates the power to make laws and the power to enforce them in the hands of a vast and unaccountable administrative apparatus that finds no comfortable home in our constitutional structure.”
Thanks for reading! — Carlton