What Do You Know About our History?

I just finished a book called "A Patriot's History of the United States" by Larry Schweikert and Michael Allen. This book,which should be required reading in every high school in the country, covers events from Columbus to the war on terror. Much of the information in these 829 pages was either new to me, more detailed, or things I had forgotten. There were certainly facts and incidents I was not offered in school and I'm sure not part of today's curriculum.
For some time I have wondered why we don't seem to hold our government accountable when many of the things we see being done today have been tried before, usually with negative results. If we don't know about our past will we simply repeat those mistakes over again? Why do we simply follow a party line when our common sense tells us the path we are taking will not be good for our country or for us? We have polls telling us less than 20% trust or respect our Congressmen or Senators, yet in the last elections we sent more than 80% of them back to Washington?
Once we take an objective look at our history it becomes evident that government, of any level or political persuasion, has never been very good at anything except growing itself. We put almost "blind faith" in people and parties whose self-serving agendas seem to negatively impact the very people who elect them and then keep them in office? Obviously, the less people know about failed policies of the past the more likely they will be to go along with the same or similar policies in the present. Since teacher's unions are one of the major contributors to politicians it is mutually beneficial to keep actual history out of the hands of our kids and to implant the version supporting the agenda being promoted today.
Their is an old adage about "Nero fiddling while Rome burned" which might be appropriate today. Government continues to fumble the ball, "fiddle while Rome burns", on those things which truly fall within their areas of responsibility and yet, with our perceived blessing,  they continue to usurp more and more power. It might not be as bad if the failures came at the hands of the people we actually elect. We could at least fire them at the next election. But, as government grows and it's tentacles reach out to grab more and more control over our lives, so do the millions and millions of bureaucrats who we can't fire at the next election!
Think I'm wrong? Ask the people of New York City who have been wallowing in 20 inches of snow for 4 days which any other city in the United States would have handled in a matter of hours. How about the people of the gulf who watched various levels of government "screw up" a hurricane and an oil spill? Over the next few weeks seniors, like myself, will begin to see what Nancy Pelosi meant when she hinted the Healthcare bill had to be passed to see what was in it. Most of it is now being written by those same "bulletproof" bureaucrats"! My social security payment went down, my supplemental plan's cost went up, and my co-pay on one prescription alone went up 375%! Welcome to lower healthcare costs!
As parents and grandparents we better make sure our kids are given a clear and complete understanding of the actual history of this country and  not the "created" version they are getting now. Otherwise the future of their children will not be the future we would wish for them.
By the way, if you think I am simply an alarmist and the people we now have in office will do just fine by us, consider this: as millions of people are without jobs and losing their homes we have an elected official trying to decide if he should pardon Billy The Kid! Seriously?

Why Do The Same Thing Over and Over?

Perhaps if we did a better job of teaching American history in our schools our elected representatives would pay more attention themselves. We are again enduring the same old argument about "taxing the rich". One side tells the rich must pay their fair share, while the other side talks about the job creation and investment potential of this group. It's funny though that neither result seems to be quantified in any numbers.

What is the real truth and what can be learned by examining our own history?

In their book, "A Patriot's History of the United States", Larry Schweigert and Michael Allen relate the following story: In 1921 President Warren Harding appointed Andrew Mellon as Secretary of the Treasury. Mellon's and his family made a fortune in oil and banking and he may have known more about business than any Treasury Secretary in history with the possible exception of Alexander Hamilton.

Faced with falling tax revenues Mellon undertook a study to determine the cause. The study revealed that the amount of money collected from the upper level of taxpayers, ("wealthy Americans"), declined with each tax increase. Mellon concluded that lowering the rates for everyone, especially the wealthiest taxpayers, would actually result in them paying MORE taxes!

From 1921 to 1926, Congress reduced the rates from 73% on top income earners and 4% on the lowest taxpayers to 25% and 1.5% respectively. Lo and behold the tax revenues from the "wealthiest Americans" almost tripled, while the lowest taxpayers saw their share of taxes actually fall. At the same time, the National Debt fell by one-third!

History does repeat itself. John Kennedy lowered taxes; Ronald Reagan did the same thing with similar results as those seen by Mellon in the twenties. We all know that doing or saying the same thing over and over with the same results is, at best, an exercise in futility. Yet our legislatures continue arguing over something that doesn't work and never will. I guess they think this argument will result in votes for both sides which is really their only concern, re-election.

If they were truly working in our interest they would look at reducing spending to match income. Perhaps they should engage some us "ordinary people" to conduct a seminar balancing how much we can spend with how much we make.