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In The Satires, VI, Juvenal poses a question of great importance, “Who will watch the watchmen?” As more and more dirt on a host of politicians comes to the fore, as China expands its heinous reach in the Pacific Ocean, threatening trade and disrupting lives, as the Russia/Ukraine crisis grows, we, the citizens, are left asking this question. There is only one answer, we, the citizens of representative governments, are charged with watching the watchmen. A more critical and cogent point has not presented itself in these writings.
Regularly I write about the findings of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) – Office of Inspector General (VA-OIG). As a disabled veteran, a person falsely arrested, injured by VA Police Officers, and flagged fallaciously as a “behavioral problem,” I am a watcher of the watchmen and report on the findings. Unfortunately, the VA has turned both a blind eye and a deaf ear to the VA-OIG and my summarizations of the VA-OIG’s conclusions. You, the taxpayer, need to know what the government is doing in your name and with your tax dollars. We, are the watchmen tasked with watching the watcher (elected political officials), who were hired (elected) to scrutinize the government. Is our role in the direct representative government of this constitutional republic clear?
Did you know your neighbors sued the Baltimore Public School system for breach of public trust? For more than 40 years, the Baltimore Public School system has intellectually abused children and misappropriated public funds through forced taxation. The unelected school district has done this while tax revenues drop precipitously, students cannot read (yet still pass high school graduation), and the neighborhoods in Baltimore become more unsafe. Illiteracy is directly tied to crime rates, poverty, and helplessness; yet, the school board in Baltimore cannot even be bothered to allow parents the right of school choice. What is the role of citizens in Baltimore, the same as it is everywhere else; protect children, scrutinize government, elect different leaders, and watch more closely those elected to protect the rights of all citizens. “Who will watch the watchmen;” you are the watchers of the watchmen, and you are being lulled to sleep!
In our constitutional republic, we have three co-equal branches of government, the executive, the legislative, and the judicial. President Biden is reported to be in full swing of destroying the power of the judicial. Recently the world watched aghast while a wholly unqualified person was measured for a position with the Supreme Court, the court of last resort in American Jurisprudence. President Biden is on record claiming he would nominate the first black woman to the supreme court; after ensuring that two other more qualified women of color were refused nomination earlier in his career. Do you sense a hypocrite, liar, and charlatan? The judge nominated cannot tell the difference between a man and a woman, allows sexual predators to have lighter sentences as she legislated from the bench. Yet, we, the watchers, are expected to believe she is remarkably qualified and uniquely capable of sitting on the Supreme Court. I have serious reservations, not because she is a woman or a person of color. My reservations rest solely upon her record as a judge, which I find detestable at best.
Everyone is aware, COVID-19 has plagued the world since late 2019, originating in China, and the costs have been exorbitant and extreme. Only until the Russia/Ukraine crisis came along did the global media find a new story for wall-to-wall, 24/7 coverage like feckless beasts fighting for a bone. Repeating only for emphasis, “Where has the opposition party been during COVID-19?” The watchers, every single one, from the mayor to the US House and Senate, went to sleep and allowed bureaucrats to overcome law and common sense to the detriment of every single citizen. Where did the watchers go, and why did they leave the citizenry to the incautious, ineffectual, inefficacious, and abortive bureaucrats who fired professionals, broke the law without regard, and still are running free? Liberties, rights, freedoms, were stolen without consideration, and the opposition party was nowhere to be found. Indeed, “Who will watch the watchmen?”
On the topic of China, why is Marco Rubio the only member of the US Congress willing to say aloud what the citizenry is wondering? 2020 closed with China owning $1.9 BILLION or roughly 192,000 acres of prime American farmland. Want to know where those crops grown on American soil go; I bet you can guess they aren’t traveling to US Supermarkets. China is still buying prime farmland, and nobody in the US House or Senate is willing to listen to farmers, ranchers, and dairymen about how their land is being purchased by China and they run out of business. Rep. Dan Newhouse was quoted regarding farmland ownership by Chinese investors as a national security issue. “The current trend in the United States is leading us toward the creation of a Chinese-owned agricultural land monopoly. There are currently no federal safeguards against the creation of this monopoly.” In response to Rep. Dan Newhouse, Rep Grace Meng proclaimed, “Can we honestly say that this Amendment, which singles out one country, won’t have repercussions on Asian-Americans across our country? Let’s include all of our adversaries.”
“Who will watch the watchmen?” An honest and fair question. I agree that no enemy of America should be allowed to own land inside America. Not that Saudi Arabia is an enemy to America, but it is important to note not just China is purchasing farms and ranchland in America. Worse, fresh water in California is regularly purchased to grow alfalfa for shipping to the Saudi Kingdom. California keeps declaring they are in a drought. The water crisis continues with or without Saudi purchases through the government’s mismanagement of resources, the need for liquid capital to keep the debt wolves away from the door, and the silly environmental laws. “Who will watch the watchmen; is apt and very important when discussing national security issues, the acquisitions of foreign entities inside America, and the need to meet citizen needs before foreign markets.
On the topic of Biden, specifically the Hunter Biden laptop and the shady deals with China, one has to ask about the timing of China’s massive land purchases ramping up. At the same time, Joey was Vice President, and Hunter was slipping the “Big Man” money. The Hunter Biden laptop story has been closely followed since October 2020, and the revelations released in the various news outlets on this story leave me appalled, alarmed, and amazed. I keep asking myself about the timing, why Joey was so valuable an investment, and the answer lies in his access to Obama. One of the media pundits discussed how Obama and Clinton are tied into the sale of access by Joey, and not all of the financial analysis is completed even now. Leaves me asking who got paid and why during the Obama presidency? A careful records review shows China going on a land purchasing spree simultaneously, and more questions for Secretary of State Clinton need to be addressed immediately! “Who will watch the watchmen?”
The US Constitution, in the 10th Amendment, provides all the authority any citizen needs to demand the watchers scrutinize the government and, if required, replace the watchers.
“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.”
We, the citizens, own the direct representative government in America, and it is time for those elected to fear the citizenry. Not because we have become violent, but because we are firing them, electing new representatives, and holding those removed from office accountable for their mismanagement while in elected office. Our country is being sold out from under our feet by those elected to office, and it is time they are held accountable before the bar of justice. Our national security is a hiss and an insult to them, all while they become enriched, and their children funnel money, and I am sick to death of seeing this nepotism. We, the watchers of the watchmen, deserve answers from transparent and speedy investigations that conclude with people wearing distinctive clothing and permanently disgraced.
How have the watchmen become millionaires while holding public office? This single question should be the watch cry of every single citizen in America until they are all held accountable and disgraced. You deserve better watchers. Our children deserve better watchers. The world deserves better representatives of the people, by the people, and for the people. Remember this in November!
© Copyright 2022 – M. Dave Salisbury
The author holds no claims for the art used herein, the pictures were obtained in the public domain, and the intellectual property belongs to those who created the images. Quoted materials remain the property of the original author.
Imagine you are going about your daily duties and visit the grocery store. Where for a specific amount of confidence and hope, you complete an exchange for a product groceries. Another trip sees you investing hope and faith in retirement using confidence to help protect against the vagaries of the future. April 15th is fast approaching, where confidence in the government is measured through tax revenue, and government officials then spend your confidence on various projects where you hope the investment will be rewarded by improved roads, better economic conditions, and safety inside defensible and sovereign boundaries.
I ask, because too often, when hope is mentioned, people immediately tie religious expectations and connotations to the word, then plasticize hope into being something it is not. Hope is not an end goal but the journey to an expectation born of desire and bounded by trust in a system that supports a person’s hope.
Complete trust is observable all around us daily, from inserting the key into the car ignition to start a car to the hours spent working where we trade our time (a precious resource) for a tangible item (paycheck) and in so many other ways and means. Consider grocery shopping; we make selections using our best judgment, with complete trust that the products purchased will not make us sick from food-borne illness or the ignorant or malicious actions of other people. Why does spitting in a police officer’s cup of coffee make us mad; because it breaks that complete trust that the same will not happen to us.
Confidence is a unique term, and Webster spends an inordinate amount of time trying to capture the power of, and reality is confidence. Confidence is “a feeling of self-assurance arising from one’s appreciation of one’s own abilities or qualities; firm trust, a specific feeling regarding the truth of something, a feeling or belief upon the reliance of someone or something.” The key to confidence is your own self-assurance. For example, you are assured through past transactions that your employer is not kiting paychecks. Your confidence in receiving a salary drives you to be motivated and return to work each day. When that trust is broken, you will leave and find new employment. Hence, people do not work for companies, but for managers and leaders, they like.
Confidence is never an unconscious decision! One cannot have firm trust, faith, or hope, in something without being consciously aware and possessing experience and knowledge in that someone or something. Hence, confidence is the conscious use of trust as a destination in the journey of hope, launched by faith.
By removing the Gold Standard from money, we stopped trading in a fungible and tactile substance (Gold, Silver, Grain, Salt, Animal Hides, etc.). We began trading in a measured system of confidence as provided by the government. Your “money” is nothing but your faith and trust in the government sponsoring your system of confidence be that confidence called a US Dollar, a Rial, a Pound Sterling, a Euro, etc., you deal in nothing but confidence. Raw products with tradable value, grain, precious metals, oil, etc., are all injected into the monetary system through investment and speculation markets, not the individual farmer, rancher, miner, etc. Who receive their wages not through trading their products but by trading their efforts and time with their confidence in an employer-supported by a functioning government system.
A “Liberty FIRST Culture” understands their money relationships to government, is engaged in preventing government abuse as that leads to lower values of currency, and the lower the value of a currency, the more expensive products and services become. Kate, the blacksmith from the (2001) movie “Knight’s Tale,” is absolutely correct, “Each drop of sweat has a price!” But the price of that sweat is not always competitive with the currency used to remunerate that effort, all because of hope, faith, and confidence in the government managing the currency. Think about that the next time you are asked to vote!
DNC-Consulting 