John Block Reports from Washington

Hello everybody out there in farm country. This radio commentary is brought to you by the Renewable Fuels Association, Monsanto, and John Deere. They are all friends, supporters, and allies of a healthy farm economy and prosperous rural America. Thank you.

And now for today’s commentary—

The first thing I want to put on the table is – “the wolves are back.” After settling our country, farmers, ranchers, and trappers got rid of almost all of the grey wolves. Along came the Endangered Species Act and now we have more than 6,000 wolves preying on our livestock. But finally, after I don’t know how many sheep and calves have been killed, we will be allowed to kill the wolves. A lot of rancher friends of mine are happy about this.

Now, let’s look at some other really serious problems that the whole country faces.

Radical Islam has gone wild. They killed our Ambassador and three other Americans in Libya. Two British soldiers were killed by gunmen in Afghan uniforms. Angry crowds are burning our flag in countries throughout the Middle East. We have not made friends over there. We are spending billions of dollars in helping to rebuild their countries, and this is what we get in return. It doesn’t help our image when a NATO war plan kills nine women gathering fire wood in a little village. They don’t trust us, and they don’t like us. We need to come home and tend to our own problems. And those problems are serious.

Look at Europe. Half the countries over there have made promises to their people that they cannot keep. Socialism is pulling them down, and it’s hard to know how they can survive without a lot of pain. Their unemployment has been higher than ours for years. One obvious reason is that “cradle to grave” government doesn’t encourage personal responsibility.

The U.S. is not too far behind Europe. We have to cut our spending. Some will say we can just raise taxes on the rich. The fact is the rich don’t have enough money to save our economy. The top 2% earners in the country already pay half of the federal income tax collected. It’s also worth noting that half of our citizens don’t pay any federal income taxes.

I don’t know if our politicians will have the courage to save us. Politicians like to spend money. That’s a good way to buy votes. They also tend to like bigger government. It makes them more powerful.

We have some critical decisions to make about spending money on welfare, and can we afford to be the policeman to the world.

In closing, I would encourage you to access my website which archives my radio commentaries dating back 10 years and will go back 20 years when complete. Check on what I said back then. Go to www.johnblockreports.com .

Until next week, I am John Block in Washington.