IOUSA – I Own the United States of America

I had the chance to watch CNN’s presentation of IOUSA The Movie hosted by the Pete G Peterson Foundation.  As I spent 2 hours watching and listening to every word and taking notes, I was shocked how I felt at the end. Shocked you may ask me? Yes I was shocked. Oh I agreed with everything the movie said about what has happened and what will take place if we don’t do something. The hosts were great in their comments about the movie. It was all too common with their comments, that what made me feel the way I did in the end. Just talking about the problem and not coming up with solutions!
More on my feeling in a moment.

The movie documented our country’s past, present and future.   China leads the world with a surplus economy.  The United States is dead last with 10 trillion dollars in debt.  (Soon to be over 12 trillion.)   What caught my eye is how our people are blind to this fact.   Most people in our country have no idea how bad off we are.  They don’t even know what the National Debt is!   This is an outrage and unbelievable, I thought to myself.   With all this debt our creditability with other world countries is deteriorating at a rapid rate.  All of the pride in our workmanship and from working in our corporations and companies is gone to foreign countries, not to get away from American workers, but because of our Income Tax System.  Social Security surpluses have helped our national debt from being even more dramatic than what we would have been.   But instead of saving these surpluses to pay Social Security benefits to future generations, the money is being spend as fast as it is collected – not on Social Security, but to fund our over-bloated government.  As the present rate by the year 2017 Social Security and Medicare will reverse the trend and become an overwhelming burden on our national economy.  They are projected to to bring our debt to about $53 Trillion, that is $53,000,000,000,000. 12 zeros!  Do you get it now?  These program were not intended to be used to supplement the US government’s budget,  they were designed to be an insurance for retirement.   Thanks to our government they managed to spend away our Social Security savings.  You can not expect to have the leisure of life and not pay taxes or cut taxes.  We have forgotten to discipline ourselves to save for a rainy day – both as individuals and as a country. We think we can just borrow the money and pay later. Ladies and Gentleman it is time to pay the bill today and where is the money?

The fall of the great Roman Empire is attributed to three main issues -  the Romans became to dependent on their government to take care of things for them, the people and the government spent more money than they were taking in  and the Roman military was stretched too thin, by trying to “police the world”.  It is disturbing to realize that these issues are the very same ones that are causing our problems here in the United States of America in 2008.  (The generally accepted date for the “Fall of the Roman Empire”  is 476.  When I looked this up, I was very surprised to read that one of the reasons proposed responsible for Rome’s fall was “the rise of Islam“.)

1st- people started relaying on the government to do everything for the them.  In other words “owning the people”.  Remember our Constitution allows the people of this country to own the government  if they can’t get it to do the job we ask it to do. We get them out of office! What happens to us?

2nd- We have stopped savings for the hard times – both as a country and as individuals. We let the government “steal” our paychecks and the money which belongs to the people of this country is spent it as the government sees fit.  We’re letting the government take ownership of the people and their savings.  We (the people and the government) are borrowing like there is no tomorrow.  At this rate there will be no tomorrow as far as the freedom we enjoy today! What is the matter with us, can’t we tell our government to stop wasting our tax money?

3rd- The military is stretched so far world wide that the cost of maintaining is skyrocketing.   The Roman Empire was the envy of the world because of their military. Oh this sounds so familiar, and who has the best of the best military in the world today? This is what happened to the Roman Empire and now is this our United States of America?   The very tyranny that self-destructs from within, not from attacks of other countries, to the Roman Empire and now the United States – greed and despair of the government to the people.   The difference besides the time in history, one has fallen, the other one can and has the chance to stop this tyranny of greed and despair!

Which brings me to my feelings after the 2 hour showing. ‘ Why is it that all we do is talk about the problem and never seem to do anything?   Are we too lazy to do anything about it?  Have we gotten to the point we don’t know how to discipline ourselves to make the changes? Are we just worried about plain oh me and don’t care?

Moving Beyond the Movie …

I have to warn you, it is our duty to defend this Constitution of the United States. Yes every man and woman, that are the citizens of this country has the duty to save the Country and the Constitution. If you thought it only falls on our military or law enforcements you were wrong. Please don’t go take out your guns just because I say you must defend the Constitution. This is not what I mean. Everyone should know the first few words start out as   “We the People of the United States , in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, ensure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America”.

In order to ensure domestic tranquility to make sure we don’t have tyranny within, we must petition our government by 2/3 vote or 3/4 of the states to make a Constitutional Convention.

As a member of the FairTax Organization the volunteer elected has a duty to lead a “grassroots” of people to petition our government. “Grassroots” are small groups of people who are join together to form a “carpet” of these small groups across the country by majority of people with the common cause.   This creates a mass of people to have their voice heard by the government.   The government must take in account what the people are asking of their government.  You cannot have just one person form one large group in one area.   By just “seeing ” how many people you can join up into one large group.  You miss the whole concept of the purpose, it is about how people feel about the issue that are pressing them to want to join to a grassroots effort. It has to be many groups through out the country, “grassroots” growing into masses. Remember the people of the United States own the government, therefore we cannot wait for the government to do anything for the people. We must tell the government and through these grassroots efforts it draws attention to the government who see many grassroots in their respected districts. That causes concern for the elected official to take in account that they need to listen.

Now is the time to petition the government and tell them we need the Fair Tax .   Now is the time to form many grassroots groups.  In order to save our country from the tyranny that will destroy within we must stop it now!
As we move forward I wonder about the initials IOUSA.   I live by our grassroots at FairTaxSOWEGA motto ” Dare To Compare, Everyone Can Do Something” and yes we can do something. I concluded that the initials of IOUSA , I think, as an American Citizen we all do and that’s…………
” I Own United States of America !”

Charlie Prochaska
Volunteer Community Coordinator
FairTaxSOWEGA