“What could possibly go wrong?” I
asked. Doctor Dennis did not grow up a ranch kid, so
pregnancy testing a small group of my cows would
give him valuable experience. Because I also needed
a trailer load of horses hauled from my place back
to Montana for an upcoming elk hunting trip, sending
Dennis killed two birds with one stone. (For
leftists, whose reality has been warped by Walt
Disney, the previous is a figure of speech and no
birds were actually killed in the composition of
this column.) To speed my exit for elk hunting once
Dennis returned, I loaded camp gear in my pickup and
trailer the evening before he went preg-checking.
Six inches of light, fluffy snow fell during the
night, and the countryside appeared so peaceful the
morning I hooked to my gooseneck trailer. I drove to
the clinic, tossed Dennis my keys and he headed to
Wyoming. Around lunchtime, I walked across the
parking lot and noticed strange marks in the snow
following my trailer. The track led all the way
home, so I figured a rubber matt must be slipping
under the rear trailer gate. “No biggie; so I will
lose a trailer mat,” I thought.
Forty miles east of Laurel and finally on dry
pavement, Dennis was making great time before a
Montana Department of Transportation employee pulled
him over. Passing motorists had reported sparks
shooting from under the trailer, so Dennis and
Charlie, the state employee, crawled under the
trailer to investigate. Noticing the distinct odor
of propane, they discovered the shiny skeleton of an
empty 30 pound propane tank trapped between the
trailer axles. Apparently, a full propane tank
rolled out the back of my pickup when I hitched to
the trailer. As I pulled forward, the propane tank
popped under the slightly higher first axle before
becoming trapped in front of the second axle. On the
snow packed roads, the tank happily rolled along as
if enjoying a leisurely Sunday drive. Lucky for all,
especially Dennis, the tank valve broke off early in
its joy ride thereby releasing all the propane prior
to the dry asphalt grinding the tank into a shower
of sparks. Can you imagine explaining to your
employer how you were driving down the road minding
your own business and the horse trailer “just blew
up?” The cause of the problem would not be found at
the scene of the explosion; the mistake was made two
hours earlier and 40 miles to the west. This brings
me to my point.
News outlets are warning of America’s “fiscal
cliff.” Just like the propane tank trapped between
the axles, the mistake leading us off the fiscal
cliff happened much, much earlier. For the first 125
years, the US Constitution successfully limited
federal government power. However, in 1913 the
“Sixteenth Amendment” empowered government to
collect disproportionate amounts of income taxes
from wealthier Americans to redistribute to large
numbers of voters. Taking from the few to give to
the many is pure Marxism, but for the next 99 years
no one cared. The populace demanded their free
stuff.
Over the decades, different administrations tweaked
this new power. President Roosevelt committed
American seniors into dependency with Social
Security. (Although it is funded with payroll rather
than income taxes, it is still founded on the
redistributive tenets of Marxism.) President
Johnson’s Great Society brought Medicare and
Medicaid, while President Bush’s compassionate
conservatism created Medicare prescription drug
benefits. Finally, as the death nail in the coffin
of American liberty, President Obama gave us
Obamacare. America is $16 trillion in debt and
borrowing 46 cents of every dollar it spends, so our
transformation is nearly complete. President Obama’s
new America has three classes of citizens with the
producer class enslaved by debt and the
non-producers enslaved by dependency. Only the
ruling class will have the freedom and means to
spend Christmas in Hawaii.
The Democrats warn inadequate taxation caused this,
so they adamantly refuse to cut spending. The
establishment Republicans claim even though our debt
was caused by excessive spending, they will
compromise with the Democrats—they always have and
always will. Forget 2013, America dropped over the
fiscal cliff 99 years ago and we are still falling.
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