Speak for Yourself

Thank goodness for spam mail.  Generally, I ignore it and let it sit there.  However, it had become so voluminous, that some deletions were in order.  Amidst the mortgage refinancing spams and the v-mails (for Viagra), I found an e-mail from a local radio station in central Jersey asking if I wanted to comment on the N.J. Residential Foreclosure Transformation Act.

Mercifully, I had missed the e-mail by some days.  The reporter needed an answer right away.  He was looking for the “negative” view on the RFTA.  I could have given him chapter and verse and what’s wrong with it.  But I would have made many people and organizations angry.

Oh, not the Liberals and Progressives.  Bless you all, that would have made my day.  No – I would have made the Tea Parties angry, and certain VIP Conservative radio and TV commentators mad.  Although I attend Tea Party members, I’m not an official member of any of them.  The one Tea Party has no official membership roster, and the other, though I love them dearly, I declined to become a member.  Not because I don’t approve of them, but because I could find myself censured and ultimately expelled if I expressed opinion they didn’t share or expressed in a way in which they disapproved.

In short, I’d be of no use to the reporter because I couldn’t say I was representing any view but my own.

When I was still working, I couldn’t speak for my company in any official capacity (and didn’t want to!).  Even though I was working in their Public Affairs department, I was an internal communications specialist.  Media Communications Specialists had to take specialized training at headquarters and memorize all the talking points.  I wouldn’t have trashed my company for the world, but I feared I might forget something or trip on my own tongue and break the eggshells I was walking.  It was just too much stress.

On the few occasions when I get early morning media calls (the secretaries weren’t in at 6 in the morning), I’d tell the reporter I couldn’t help them; I was simply the company photographer.  I could take a photo for them, but that was about it.  Which was true, as far as they needed to know.  They didn’t need to know that I was also an internal reporter, and that my specialty was best practice/best employee stories.  Telling them I was a company photographer left them in enough awe not to question me further and took my assurance that someone would return their call.

I’m a student of speechwriting.  I’ve taken courses.  I even made one, at a Tea Party rally.  Yet, I was only permitted to write one speech during my tenure at my old company, and that speech was an act of providence.  The request was last-minute and the secretary said the assigned speechwriter wasn’t available.  There was nothing particularly difficult about it; it was a speech for a Veterans Day event and the vice president said he was pleased with it when it was over.

My supervisor at the time wasn’t so pleased, nor was the speechwriter.  I gave him one of my better stories in exchange for trampling on his territory.  I was never allowed to write another speech.  As for the Tea Party speech, when they realized I was speaking off-topic (the topics were the Constitution, limited government, and lower taxes – I spoke about the importance of education – both of our children and voters), I was cut-off and ordered to cease speaking.  I never gave another Tea Party speech, either.

That’s okay, because I’m really not much of a public speaker.  I only knew that I had to get the message out.  It was sort of like Princess Leia warning Luke of the trap he was walking into on the Cloud City.  Fortunately, they heard me, particularly the mothers.  They networked and got the word out.  It’s not so much how many people hear you (or read you), but that the right people get the message.

The N.J. Residential Foreclosure Transformation Act is up for vote in the Assembly today.  What’s wrong with this bill?  Well, everything.  Despite its manifest “good intentions,” it’s a very bad bill with some very bad intentions.

The evil seed was planted years ago with the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), giving mortgages to people who couldn’t pay them.  That act gave minorities a sense of ownership, but in fact, the government is the real property owner.  They don’t pay those mortgages, though; we, the taxpayers do.

We have been paying billions in taxes to allow a Progressive government to “transform” our society.  We will be footing the bill for this bill well.  Not only in taxes, but in ever-decreasing property values, crime, social services, and loss of freedom. 

The examples of the mentally ill, the physically handicapped, and drug rehabilitation residents are supposed to play at our heart-strings, much the way alternative energy is supposed to ring a Pavlovian bell of sympathy and guilt in favor of environmentalism.  Who wouldn’t want to help the homeless?  How can we be so heartless?  The homes are just sitting there empty, unoccupied.  They’d be put to good use.

No, they would not.  The tenants of these homes would not be owners.  People who only rent, or worse, only occupy a space have no sense of ownership at all.  All these people would have is a sense of “entitlement” with no corresponding sense of responsibility, any more than they have for the neighborhoods in which they already live.

As more affluent city people bring their city ways with them – cutting down all the trees, paving over every inch of their property, building fortress-like decks so as not to come to close to nature, and building giant swimming pools even though New Jersey is filled with lakes – so the poor and minorities would bring their slums – and their filth, bad habits, and crime - with them.

These are not working class minorities coming here, who would at least have some pride of ownership.  These are the lowest level of society with the least neighborly habits.  And not only the homeless are coming, but an assorted variety of criminals as well.  They’ll be brought into neighborhoods with schools, playgrounds, and children.  How long do you think a family is going to stay in such a neighborhood?  If they must, they’ll take a loss on their houses for the safety of their children.  The government is depending upon it.

That is the “transformation” they are seeking.  Ruining neighborhoods socially and economically will pave the way for Smart Growth’s socialist plans for relocating people.  There’s a certain vengeance in their plan to turn the rabble out into the quiet neighborhoods of suburbia and force the taxpayers to live on top of one another in carefully planned cities where you’ll have no freedom, no privacy, and no car with which to escape your plight.

Eventually, the suburban homes will be declared uninhabitable and razed.  This will create Smart Growth’s “open spaces.”  They won’t be open for long, though.  Upon this confiscated, stolen real estate, the wealthy elite will build their own private paradise.  Foreigners are already purchasing American land in great quantities.

It’s an old communist story that the communists don’t like to tell.  They cover it with phrases like “social justice” and “redistribution of wealth.”  The middle class, according to Marx, must be eliminated.

We don’t intend to go quietly into that proletarian good night, though.  I can’t speak for you; I can only warn you (again and again).  You must speak for yourselves.  If everyone speaks up, we may be able to turn the tide.  Call your N.J. legislator, or Gov. Christie, today (today is the vote).

Call today and speak for yourselves, while you still can.