My fellow Americans, forty-five years ago on the other side of this great mall a crowd as impressive as this heard Martin Luther King give his “I have a dream” speech and here we are.
No nation can afford to throw away one-eighth of its talent. We not only have rhythm, basketball and barbecue, but hundreds of products and processes from peanut butter, the mailbox and stoplight from black scientists and engineers. Yale University has an on-line database of 250 black scientists who made significant contributions to America. In medicine, if you were going to be an African American doctor, you had to be more than good, you had to be the best and many have been.
Now let no man say America is not what it said it was, the home of the brave and the land of the free. We are all, “free at last!”
The country is in trouble because too many lies have been told too long. America needs the truth. America needs the facts. It is a fact that the economy has actually been quite good with 26 quarters of unbroken growth.
It is a fact you cannot give a mortgage to a man who cannot afford it. That expanded the housing market dangerously, but when foreclosures were only seven-tenths of one percent major media were yelling, “Foreclosures are up 100%!” true, but over 99% were OK. That”s not reporting, that”s destroying trust and trust is needed. A Dollar is a piece of paper until you trust it.
There is no time when all the banks can cover all deposits and not because they”re doing anything wrong. It is because they”re doing it right. They lend money and have only enough on hand to cover normal withdrawals. If they need more they borrow it from the Federal Reserve. That is what the Federal Reserve is for. It is a “reserve.” If everybody runs to the banks it”s like everybody running to one side of a boat; it sinks.
The facts of our lives are simple, but lies have been told for power. Power to destroy good and decent men holding office. That has to stop.
We appear to be in trouble today and some say we should borrow from the future, shore up the failed big businesses and have government run everything. That was tried in 1932 and it failed miserably. From the time FDR invoked the “New Deal” to the beginning of World War II unemployment went up to 25% and never fell below 16%. People were starving in America because government was managing everything from an average distance of 1500 miles and several years.
America is built and rebuilt by 12 million businesses every year. 9,000 of these are large, shareholder held corporations. One economist said, 90% of the wealth is owned or controlled by 2% of the people, he was wrong two ways: The net worth of all big corporations is not half that of all businesses and even those are owned by the people with stock shares, 401K”s and pension funds.
Eleven million, 991 thousand American business are small. The average has less than ten employees run by “Mom and Pop” living their American dream. In many cases they don”t do as well as they would have working for government, but they love what they”re doing. Nothing is more powerful than a dream. I have a dream?
These people have been taxed to death. Everything they buy, sell, import, the building in which they work are all heavily taxed. Washington and the state governments are awash with so much money they have to work at spending it. The average government employee makes three times what he or she would in the private sector when you add the salary, benefits and pension for the time worked. Highway patrolmen and prison guards make as much as U.S. Senators. Counties are filing bankruptcy to get out of pension obligations promised to buy votes. That has to stop.
Studies of our economic history show America works best when the total taxes paid equal 18.3% of the gross national product. Today all taxing authorities take over 40% and it is a miracle the country works. We have to change that because it will give us the 30% annual growth we”ve had in the years when taxes were right.
Those years included the one John Deere invented the steel plow and opened the prairie to farming. Another was the year Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin and there have been others. Early in the 20th century the Director of the Patent Office wanted to close it down “because everything has been invented.” The next year the Wright brothers flew and millions of new things have been invented since. By learning more we expand the perimeter of ignorance. There is more to be done now than ever and more ability to do it. That is what I want for America. I have a dream.
Adrian Vance is a resident of Lakeport, and he is a Founding Contributing Editor for Peterson”s PhotoGraphic Magazine and former West Coast Editor of Popular Photography, a book author, and a local conservative commentator.
