Sunday, January 30, 2011

By friend "Dale" of www.mostly cajun.com I believe this bears repeating, so here you have it.


"If You’re Gonna Steal Something…
This is a double meaning."

( I "borrowed" this from Dale )

"On the first level, I “stole” this graphic from SynthStuff, a daily read ever since I even HAD a blogroll:

And on the SECOND level, this is a truth of monumental import that not only the Egyptians need to hold close to their hearts, but in light of recent rumblings from our own benevolent leaders, we Americans need to recognize it also.

There is ONE reason and ONE reason only that a government would want the power to shut down the free and uncontrollably fast exchange of information that is the Internet, and that is to stifle the exchange of ideas. Those who are in control against the will of the people are the ONLY ones who wish to prevent bloggers and texters and tweeters and other users of the internet from being able to post ideas and facts and instantaneous and uncensored news reports.

Don’t buy into our own administration’s “It’s for the good of the children” whine. They’re not one iota as worried about free access to kiddie porn as they are about Obama’s constant flip-flopping lies or any of his minion’s many revelations about the true directions they have for the country.

That’s the key, folks. Twenty years ago, gaffes like Obama and his bunch are popping out almost daily would have never seen light of day. Today hardly a minute passes between screwup and nationwide dissemination. Make no mistake: The ruling elite HATE this. They LIKED having a compliant mainstream media that would bury stories antithetical to the goals of the regime. A free internet, even little silly things like this blog, they’re thousands of voices that did not have a forum, did NOT get exposure a mere few years ago. And they HATE us.

So regard Egypt. It’s in chaos, and like much in the Mid-East, there are wheels within wheels, triangulations and convenient alliances, inscrutable Eastern “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” alliances where last week’s enemyis this week’s ally is next week’s enemy.

Instead, regard that the government cannot allow what it cannot control, even though EVERYBODY gets access. And so in Egypt, the government shut the Internet down.

Don’t think that our benevolent ruling class doesn’t wish they could do the same thing here, and bunkie, don’t lay this JUST at the feet of the Left. RINO’s? Do you honestly think that the country club republicans are all that into letting you have the freedom to revel every time one of those RINO SOB’s votes for bigger government and higher taxes? How MANY groups wish they could get into the internet and shut down whatever their pet peeve is?

Regard the poster. And think FREEDOM!"


Well said Dale, and God bless you for doing it. (click on the header for Dales Blog.)

Tom Ford

NO. 850

Saturday, January 29, 2011

Credit card rates at record highs ! (see link in post.)

Just what is in your wallet these days ? If it's a credit card issued by (you pick the institution) it may well be at or near 15% or more ! Why do I bother to bring this bit of good news to you, well bank credit rates are on the rise and that means Crestwood's budget is now more important than ever.

In looking at the City intake (from taxes, ETC.) I wonder if we can continue to hire new personnel (I understand Parks has a new employee,) and fund projects that are really not needed and keep our collective heads above water ?

Ladies and Gentlemen there is only so much to go around and the School District just got a huge increase, so I believe a Crestwood tax increase request will be laughed off the ballot, so when do we see some of that fiscal responsibility ?

Please remember that the Mayor chairs the ways and means committee and he seems to be able to exert his influence to get what he wants. If ever there was a need for a Mayor with the financial knowledge and courage of his convictions it's NOW.

(Link to the CNN report.) http://money.cnn.com/2011/01/28/pf/credit_cards_interest_rates/
index.htm?iid=HLMNot perfect credit = 59% APR

Tom Ford

NO. 849

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

MIKE ANTHONY OF THE CALL HITS A GAME WINING HOMER WITH THIS EDITORIAL (PLEASE CLICK HERE FOR THE STORY !)





Mr. Anthony has described our choices for Mayor this November better than anyone I have ever seen (including me !) This editorial should be with every voter on election day this April just in case they happen to forget what we have witnessed over the past six years !

There is nothing more I could possibly ad to this comprehensive time line of what (you pick the adjective)"His Honor" has gotten us into as played out by Mr. Anthony, so without further eloquence, PLEASE READ and remember we have a choice, that being:

MR. JEFF SCHLINK FOR MAYOR 2011 !

Tom Ford

NO. 848

Sunday, January 23, 2011

The bridge to nowhere in White Cliff Park (or what's going on with it?)



I have been looking into this ridiculous project for possible signs of wasted expenditures, and a couple of things have surfaced. I believe the ONLY person so far to "condemn" the current bridge as "unusable" is Mr. Jim Eckrich, PE of City Administrator fame.

Now the interesting thing here is that Mr. Eckrich's discipline is in CIVIL ENGINEERING and as such he should know if it's sound or not, but where is the "second opinion," Shouldn't we have one before we spend the money ?

Next it was said on the Dias that a "canopy fire" would be the ruination of Crestwood, and thus the bridge was needed (forget the fact that a road behind the complex leads there now,) else life as we know it was over. (I take it the fire is waiting for the bridge completion ?)

To date what has been accomplished other than a couple of "bore samples" to determine if you can build a bridge there. Not one scrap of paper drawings have been forthcoming (that we know of,) and we have no idea what our "final cost" will be. I am in a business (HVAC) that sees "change orders" and requests for "more money" all the time due to rising costs of raw materials (sheet metal up 50%,) are we going o be the victim of this same thing ?Is there any sort of "oversight committee" from City Hall to insure this WILL NOT HAPPEN ?

Mr. Eckrich, I ask you and the Public Works director to show us a copy of the contract with the engineering company so we may ALL be enlightened. If not, well I will be filing a FOIA form for it, so this is your chance to show us the "open Government" promised by "His Honor !"

I ask that the Board re-consider this expenditure at this time as were low on tax revenue, the employees need to be taken care of first (our portion of the funds would go a long way toward raises) and apparently we really don't need the bridge to begin with ! If you must have this folly (citizens can't drive on it) wait until 2012 when the aquatic center is paid off and then re-visit it. I know "the grant money," well that money came from US (tax payers) not some tree in Washington, so the heck with it !

What do you think ?




Tom Ford

NO. 847

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Alderman Jeff Schlink to oppose "His Honor" this April for mayor of Crestwood !



Now we have a breath of fresh air on the horizon as Alderman (Ward 2) Jeff Schlink has filed for the position of Mayor of Crestwood in the April elections !

Jeff is a responsible family man with excellent credentials both as a leader and a person of knowledge in the financial industry. As the campaign unfolds you will learn much more about Jeff, and I know you will like what you see and hear. In Jeff Schlink we see the very thing we have been looking for in a mayor, and as a younger person he is sure to bring fresh new ideas to Crestwood.

I welcome the news and ask that all of you join with your fellow Crestwoodians to meet Jeff, listen to his ideas for Crestwood, and yes, vote for Jeff Schlink for mayor in April!

Tom Ford

NO. 846

Sunday, January 16, 2011

A comprehensive list of tax increases in the Obama care bill. (click here for the listing.)


To those among us who feel that the Obama health care law is wonderful I ask, did you know these increases were in there ? (remember Pelosi said "we have to pass the law to see whats in there!") Folks we are taxed to the hilt as it is now, and this mess will serve to push us all into indentured servitude to Uncle Sam.

The Congress will take up the Obama care bill repeal this week, I urge you to contact your elected Representatives and tell them to repeal this mass grab of our hard earned money while we can.

Do I expect Obama to sign it, or Reed to back it, no I don't. That said however the next election looms large in the minds of those due, so they will be tempering their actions to be reelected less they fall as those before them last November. So the Congress must pass it every week if needed, keep it in the limelight, and force the issue for all our sake's.

If a new "reform" is truly needed (and I doubt that) it Can be taken up, and this time fully researched before passage as it should have been done in the first place.

We are now officially $14 TRILLION dollars in debt, the Obama care bill added $165 BILLION to the debt (so far) and is a real and needed first step in cutting spending. If spending is not curtailed, and soon I suggest you contact the Rosetta Stone folks and learn a dialect of Chinese as they are the major holders of the National Debt !

Before my progressive / socialist friends scream "Bush did it" let me remind them that this massive debt was engineered by a democrat House and Senate as they had control since 2007, and they were (and are) the ones with the purse strings, not the President.

Tom Ford

NO. 845

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

New low reached by despicable politicians in the Arizona shooting (click here for the story.)



Well I have seen a heck of a lot of low down things in my time, but this well may take the cake! Here we have a United States Senator fund raising by using the tragedy in Arizona to further his campaign coffers !

I really don't care what party you belong to (this buffoon is a Democrat,) you should have the common decency to allow the families of the fallen to bury their loved ones in peace and not use their death to further your political career.

I pray that the good people of Arizona see him for just what he is, a conniving, low down swine more interested in his own "career" than the lives of his fellow Arizonians. And we wonder how the (so called) Rev. Phelps and the Westboro baptist Church get away with disrupting military funerals.


Tom Ford

NO. 844

Sunday, January 09, 2011

The ghost of Thanksgiving to come. (This is from a Crestwood resident, and very well done I think.)

The Ghost of Thanksgiving Yet to Come



"Winston, come into the dining room, it's time to eat," Julia yelled to her husband. "In a minute, honey, it's a tie score," he answered. Actually, Winston wasn't very interested in the traditional holiday football game between Detroit and Washington. Ever since the government passed the Civility in Sports Statute of 2017, outlawing tackle football for its "unseemly violence" and the "bad example it sets for the rest of the world," Winston was far less of a football fan than he used to be. Two-hand touch wasn't nearly as exciting.

Yet it wasn't the game that Winston was uninterested in. It was more the thought of eating another Tofu Turkey. Even though it was the best type of Veggie Meat available after the government revised the American Anti-Obesity Act of 2018, adding fowl to the list of federally-forbidden foods, (which already included potatoes, cranberry sauce and mincemeat pie), it wasn't anything like real turkey. In addition, ever since the government officially changed the name of "Thanksgiving Day" to "A National Day of Atonement" in 2020 to officially acknowledge the Pilgrims' historically brutal treatment of Native Americans, the holiday had lost a lot of its luster.

Eating in the dining room was also a bit daunting. The unearthly gleam of government-mandated fluorescent light bulbs made the Tofu Turkey look even weirder than it actually was, and the room was always cold. Ever since Congress passed the Power Conservation Act of 2016, mandating all thermostats-which were monitored and controlled by the electric company-be kept at 68 degrees, every room on the north side of the house was barely tolerable throughout the entire winter.

Still, it was good getting together with family. At least most of the family. Winston missed his mother, who passed on in October, when she had used up her legal allotment of live-saving medical treatment. He had had many heated conversations with the Regional Health Consortium, spawned when the private insurance market finally went bankrupt, and everyone was forced into the government health care program. And though he demanded she be kept on her treatment, it was a futile effort. "The RHC's resources are limited," explained the government bureaucrat Winston spoke with on the phone. "Your mother received all the benefits to which she was entitled. I'm sorry for your loss."

Ed couldn't make it either. He had forgotten to plug in his electric car last night, the only kind available after the Anti-Fossil Fuel Bill of 2021 outlawed the use of the combustion engines-for everyone but government officials. The fifty mile round trip was about ten miles too far, and Ed didn't want to spend a frosty night on the road somewhere between here and there.

Thankfully, Winston's brother, John, and his wife were flying in. Winston made sure that the dining room chairs had extra cushions for the occasion. No one complained more than John about the pain of sitting down so soon after the government-mandated cavity searches at airports, which severely aggravated his hemorrhoids. Ever since a terrorist successfully smuggled a cavity bomb onto a jetliner, the TSA told Americans the added "inconvenience" was an "absolute necessity" in order to stay "one step ahead of the terrorists." Winston's own body had grown accustomed to such probing ever since the government expanded their scope to just about anywhere a crowd gathered, via Anti-Profiling Act of 2022. That law made it a crime to single out any group or individual for "unequal scrutiny," even when probable cause was involved. Thus, cavity searches at malls, train stations, bus depots, etc., etc., had become almost routine. Almost.

The Supreme Court is reviewing the statute, but most Americans expect a Court composed of six progressives and three conservatives to leave the law intact. "A living Constitution is extremely flexible," said the Court's eldest member, Elena Kagan. “Europe has had laws like this one for years. We should learn from their example," she added.

Winston's thoughts turned to his own children. He got along fairly well with his 12-year-old daughter, Brittany, mostly because she ignored him. Winston had long ago surrendered to the idea that she could text anyone at any time, even during Atonement Dinner. Their only real confrontation had occurred when he limited her to 50,000 texts a month, explaining that was all he could afford. She whined for a week, but got over it.

His 16-year-old son, Jason, was another matter altogether. Perhaps it was the constant bombarding he got in public school that global warming, the bird flu, terrorism or any of a number of other calamities were "just around the corner," but Jason had developed a kind of nihilistic attitude that ranged between simmering surliness and outright hostility. It didn't help that Jason had reported his father to the police for smoking a cigarette in the house, an act made criminal by the Smoking Control Statute of 2018, which outlawed smoking anywhere within 500 feet of another human being. Winston paid the $5000 fine, which might have been considered excessive before the American dollar became virtually worthless as a result of QE13. The latest round of quantitative easing the federal government initiated was, once again, to "spur economic growth.” This time they promised to push unemployment below its years-long rate of 18%, but Winston was not particularly hopeful.

Yet the family had a lot for which to be thankful, Winston thought, before remembering it was a Day of Atonement. At least he had his memories. He felt a twinge of sadness when he realized his children would never know what life was like in the Good Old Days, long before government promises to make life "fair for everyone" realized their full potential. Winston, like so many of his fellow Americans, never realized how much things could change when they didn't happen all at once, but little by little, so people could get used to them.

He wondered what might have happened if the public had stood up while there was still time, maybe back around 2010, when all the real nonsense began. "Maybe we wouldn't be where we are today if we'd just said 'enough is enough' when we had the chance," he thought.
Maybe so, Winston. Maybe so.


Tom Ford

NO. 843

Saturday, January 08, 2011

Censorship by the politically correct crowd, or what next ?





Honestly this was inspired by "Dales Blog" which I enjoy reading daily (I borrowed the cartoons from his blog for illustrations.) It seems to me that the P/C crowd has gone way overboard as usual on this type of thing. First we saw "revisionist history" with such things as the "Enola Gay" exhibit being closed at the Smithsonian so as not to offend the Japanese (they attacked us remember ?) Now were into no "profiling" lest it upset the Middle Easterners, and the Government has taken control of the Internet via regulation.

I am old enough to remember the "Brown Shirts" that burned books and drove intellectuals out of Nazi Germany (no I wasn't there, I was told about it in the early 40's) under the same mantel of "correctness," and I fear that sort of thing may well happen here if this is left unchecked.

May we have your thoughts please ?


Tom Ford

no. 842

Saturday, January 01, 2011

Happy New Year Crestwood !



"You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in their struggle for independence.”
by C.A. Beard

What will become of us in 2011 ? Well that will depend on the BOA, and the courage of their convictions when it comes to doing the right thing budget wise.

I have been told that a complete reorganization of the Park Department has happened with promotions and raises to fit the new title. We had the chance to use that salary of the past parks director to help balance the budget, but NO, we can't do that can we. (FOIA form will be in for the exact promotions and raises on this Monday

may i suggest Mr. Eckrich take a very close look at the real need for these promotions and raises, as were not bringing in the revenue we once were.

Tom Ford

NO. 841
>