By Pat Orr
Apple Valley Review
On my way in to Wal-Mart last week, I asked the petition gatherer at the door how things were going. He said he was told they had gotten enough signatures in the first few days to put the new Apple Valley Wal-Mart question on the ballot and now they were just getting “gravy” to counter balance any bad or challenged signatures.
One has to believe Wal-Mart will push the Town Council for a special election at the earliest possible date once the signatures are validated so the developer can start moving dirt again at the Dale Evans Parkway site.
Whether you are a Wal-Mart shopper or not, the sales tax, property tax and payroll they bring to the community will help Apple Valley. Someone in Adelanto has to be kicking themselves for not making whatever deal they had to in order to bring the Highway 395 Wal-Mart to their side of the road as opposed to the Victorville side.
Commercial growth and jobs matter.
America the divided
As we approach our 237th birthday as a nation on Thursday, it can be depressing to review where we are as the only nation on earth that was founded on purpose for a reason: freedom.
I am two-thirds of the way through Doris Kearn Goodwin’s Pulitzer Prize Winning Lincoln biography, “Team of Rivals.” If you only saw the movie — which was based on one chapter of the massive book — you don’t know our first Republican President at all. He famously knew that “a house divided could not stand” — he was never a clear proponent of racial integration or equality but hated the idea that America would tolerate slavery and the concept of humans as chattel.
The notion that humans could be bought and sold divided political parties families and the country.
Many foreign countries initially teetered on the edge of supporting the Confederacy to insure their supply of cotton to European mills. The border states wanted assurances — which they initially got — that the Federal Government would not outlaw slavery in all the states and their citizens could choose their own path. On top of that, Lincoln’s Union Army couldn’t win a battle or find a decent general to lead for the first two and a half years of the war.
That was an America divided.
I hear loose talk from old conservatives and young libertarians about a “new revolution.” I totally agree that the brand of economic slavery now practiced by the central government is getting dangerously close to a system we thought was ended in 1865. That notwithstanding, our hope continues to lie in the American spirit of individualism and achievement — and the ballot box.
The only thing constant is change.
The pendulum always swings back when it goes too far one way or the other. Colonialism, Socialism, Fascism, Communism, Nazism, McCarthyism — we have met and defeated a lot of “isims” in the last 237 years. Yes, it’s time to kick out the current crop of bums who believe centralized top-down government decision making is good for America — and we eventually will just as we did before.
Thomas Jefferson took a long term view when he said, “My reading of history convinces me that most bad government comes from too much government.” Amen, brother.
Happy Birthday, America. The experiment continues.
Pat Orr is a local business owner, community volunteer and political junkie.