941 Freedom Day-01/15/2010

They were called Minutemen. They were simple farmers and shopkeepers who were trying to live in peace and freedom in our nation's early history. But, the government at the time pushed them too far. They taxed them too much. They restricted their freedom. One named Patrick Henry said..."give me liberty or give me death."
That was the kind of passion that created this country. Not only did they have passion, those simple farmers and shopkeepers backed up their passion by putting down their rakes and brooms and picking up their muskets. They took on the best and biggest army in the world and they won. The prize was the free country that has been handed down to us.
What have we done with that prize? We spend our days pointing fingers at each other. We elect people and put them into powerful positions where they expect to be treated better than the rest of us. They pass laws which reward the incompetent with billions of dollars of our money instead of dozens of years in prison. Not only have they ruined the retirement plans of millions of our elderly by destroying the free market economy, they are destroying the future of Americans yet to be born.
What would those brave Minutemen think of us? What would they say? Would they praise the way we take such abuse from a new type of ruling class who lives above us all in Washington? Would they call us cowards like our new Attorney General did? Would they tell us to rise up?
No, I am not advocating a violent overthrow of the the federal government but I do think it is time to get their attention. But how? They already have our money. We live in fear of April 15 and the IRS audit. Our elected officials can give grand speeches but they do nothing because they know we can't do anything. Or can we?
It's early spring in Nebraska. I am grateful for that because I have spent the winter living in my car. And on those coldest of nights, when sleep was almost impossible, an idea kept coming back to me. How can we get Washington's attention. How can we stop this spending madness and corruption? The answer is 941 Freedom Day.
Any small business person knows, a 941 is a quarterly tax form that the business owner is required to fill out which details and employee's wages and deductions. A check for those deductions has to be sent to the IRS along with the report. That's how the government gets our money. That is the critical link.
What if, in a massive display of civil disobedience, small business owners stopped filling out that form and stopped collecting taxes for the federal government. What if January 15, 2010 became 941 Freedom Day?
What would be the purpose of 941 Freedom Day? We have five demands:
1. By election day in November 2009, the congress and the senate must pass legislation that:
Eliminates the Internal Revenue Service
Eliminates the Tax Code
Offer the voters a choice of two new means of federal taxation not based on current methods. The plan that receives most votes, becomes the new means of collecting government revenue AND it goes into effect on January 1, 2010. No ifs. No ands. No buts.
2. The congress and the senate must pass legislation that restricts the terms of committee chairmen to a term no longer than the current term of the body. Let's get new blood into old chairs and clean up corruption. That also includes the Speaker of the House.
3. The congress and the senate must pass legislation that makes it illegal to buy political candidate advertising in the private media for senate and congressional races. Those candidates will have an equal amount of time given to them on two or three specific dates to offer their ideas live on public television. That will eliminate their need to spend so much time raising money and put them back to work doing the people's business instead of being perfect targets for bribes.
4. No more earmarks. If the ideas is good enough to stand the light of public scrutiny, let the bill be introduced by itself.
5. The Congressperson or Senator must sign off that they have read any proposed bill-not just their staffers-before they can vote on a bill. That bill must also be put online for a period of three days so the public can read it.
It's time to let the congress know their games are done. It's time to let the congress know that a new breed of Minuteman is alive and well and ready to act.
Here's what we would like you to do:
On April 15, send your representatives and senators a hand written postcard that simply says:
I Support 941 Freedom Day. January 15, 2010.
On October 15, send another one.
Send this email to every small business owner you know. If you don't know their email address, drop off a printed copy.
There are no lists to sign up for so their will be no "enemies list" threat for you to worry about. There are no dues or fees to pay.
If the congress does nothing and if no bills are passed or no new tax measure are scheduled for the November election, AND if you are a small business owner, simply stop filling out the 941 form and stop collecting tax payments. If only 10% of you take that action, it will cripple the IRS. This action is no different than the Civil Rights Marches of the 1960s.
941 Freedom Day
January 15, 2010
Are you one of the new American Minutemen?

The Gift to Gaza

Hilliary Clinton, our much heralded Secretary of State, gave $900 million dollars to Gaza reconstruction on his first outing in her new job. Isn't that wonderful!

That's almost $2,200 each for the 410,000 or so folks living there. Remember how much those folks love us, too. I can still remember that large woman in a black Berka dancing and clapping in a Gaza street after they learned that the two World Trade Towers had been destroyed and 3,000 American had been killed.

Why in the hell are we giving these people $900 million dollars when we could have used that money to do something here at home like more bank bailout money for Barney Frank, or redo Chris Dodd's mortgage, or pay Charlie Rangel and Tom Daschle's taxes?

Have the wheels totally fallen off the lame brain Washington train? Giving money to the Palestinians is about as popular as running Heidi during the NCAA National Championship basketball game. And to be totally Barney Frank, I could use the $2,200 to help pay my taxes.

Where is the outrage? The Palestinian people need to rebuild their mud huts because Israel knocked the hell out of them because they wouldn't stop shooting little missiles into Israel.

Maybe we should have given them 410,000 shovels and 410,000 bags of good 'ole American cement. As long as the shovels didn't come in at $2,000 each, we would have done a better thing than giving them a turbo ton of much needed-at-home cash.

After all, they may create a truck bomb and kill more American Marines somewhere in the desert hood. Nice job Hillary. We can't wait for act II.

Jeffer is losing his battle.

It's a sad time for me. One of my dearest friends is losing his battle for life to brain cancer. His pain level is down but his brother Scott tells me he is fading away, both physically and mentally.

That's a shame for the Mountain Man. Yes, Jeffer as we like to call him, flipped the bird to the ladder climbers a long time ago and did what all of the rest of us threatened to do. He moved to the beauty of the Colorado mountains and for the most part, he made a go at it. He knew his wines and could cook with the best of them as he went through a variety of hotel management and chef jobs. He lived where he wanted to live and did what he wanted to do.

He finally settled in the stone business and was the guy to call when your million dollar condo need some nice high priced stone counter tops.

Even in his mid 50's, Jeffer was in top shape. While some of us developed new belt sizes and had to move over the bigger pant sizes, Jeffer continued shopping the skinny section. His closets were busting with designer suits and shirts and shoes, but close to the door were his muddy work boots and a working man's hoodie.

His skin looked like it was painted on him and he blazed up and down Vail pass on his expensive bike when the rest of us could barely negotiate a steep driveway.

I went trout fishing with Jeff several time. We never caught a thing and never had a strike. There was a good reason. Jeffer plowed through the bushes and weeds and into the stream with the gentleness of a bull elephant on the way to a late lunch.

The trout were long gone by the time he whipped his line back and fourth and sent it upstream in search of the"big one." He laughed and talked loudly about the beauty of the day and the mountains. I don't think anyone appreciated his life as much as he did--with the possible exception of his big sweet dog Zusie.

I always thought Jeffer would meet his maker in some kind of spectacular mountain event, like running into a tree while skiing on his 82nd birthday. But, he is wasting a way an inch at a time.

Jeffer is a lone wolf like me. His Mom and Dad, brother Scott, and sister Annie are the ones suffering the most because Jeffer's memory has been claimed by cancer.

The end is never fun and even though Jeffer may be around a long time, the Jeffer I knew is the guy in the picture I took a few years ago.

He will always be the happy-go-lucky Mountain Man who put life first and everything else, including the IRS, in a distant second place. That's a two howls up for this Mountain Man.

Jeffer is losing his battle with cancer but put a smile on your face. He won the war.

Good for you, Jeffer. Good for you!

Here's to Charlie

Charlie Senter was a sign painter. I followed him around Hartington, Nebraska when I was a boy and watched as he transformed the car and truck doors into interesting advertising for the local business folks. (He took time to redo the sides of my dad's wrecker so Miller Motor was shine and sparkle just as brightly as the People's Store delivery van.)

I watched Charlie demonstrate perfection. An empty door was in front of him and a tray full of brightly colored enamel paint was right next to him. He rough sketched what he wanted to do, and hopefully what the owner wanted him to do, on the car or truck door. Then he bagan to paint. He used a long stick with a little skin bean bag attached to the end of the stick. Later in my life, I would discover that stick was called a Mahl stick and no sign painter worth a lick could paint without it.

Charlie rested his brush with paint hand on the stick and used the other hand on the end opposite the bag to guide the paint hand in a perfect harmony of design. No a wiggle. Not a run. No line where there was not suppose to be a line. He was as perfect as a graphic computer printer with one exception. Charlie was human.

I was taken by Charlie's art and his ability to produce it. As summer came to a close, Charlie was on his way. I asked dad where Charlie was going. "South," he said. "My guess is Florida. He likes to spend his winters there."

I thought I might become a sign painter like Charlie. I got some paint from the body shop and a couple of brushes from Hergert Hardware and made my own stick with, at that time anyway, an unknown name. My lines didn't go where they were suppose to go. My paint ran. My designs looked like 1st grade stuff and I was at least an 8th grader. My frustration grew and before long, the paint went back to the body shop and the brushes into the trash. But Charlie was forever etched in my mind.

One day, the man who owned the Dairy Queen store stopped by the garage. He told dad that his sign out on the highway had seen better days and wondered if I could repaint it for him. He wanted a picture of a Dairy Queen cone and an arrow and the words, "1 mile" painted on it.

Dad assured him I could deliver. I was scared to death but a promise from dear ole' dad was as good as a blood oath. My quivering hand and mind set out on the task and a couple of days later, there was a new sign on the highway. Northern Natural Gas stopped by not long after that. But that was the end of my sign painting career. I was off to college and a careers in advertising and flying.

Now I am the old guy and they are right. Social Security isn't enough. Some say I played too hard during my life and here I am paying for it at the end. I would have to turn to something else. Perhaps another minimum wage job to tide me through.

But I have worked enough of those kind of jobs. I have seen the bad side of Best Buy and Value Place. No benies. No praise. No raise. And in some cases, downright danger.

What could I do that I could make some money doing; enjoy what's left of my life; and let me have some freedom.

Charlie would like the answer. After all, he was the wizard of sign painting and he painted a colorful vision of the future in a small boy's mind.

I decided to do splash painting on car windshields. (That's some of my work in the photos.) That type of painting doesn't have to be perfect. It has to get attention. It has to be colorful. And, it doesn't have to last more than a couple of weeks until the sale is over and the next opportunity presents itslef.

I will never be as good as Charlie was but there are plenty of people who think I am good enough. And that's good enough for me. After all, how many people have a guardian wizard in their back pocket for 54 years and a sudden love for Florida winters?

Cute logo don't you think?