Locals gather for annual celebration of Constitution Day
But most people — including people like Janice Hadaway — can’t say they know much about the document that the American people have built their laws and politics around.
Which is why Hadaway and others on Saturday celebrated Constitution Day in Rome for the second straight year on Saturday.
“Even though I went through 12 years of school and have a master’s degree in music, I never knew that every president since 1954 has designated Sept. 17 as Constitution Day,” said Hadaway. “I only learned this a couple of years ago. And I’m afraid that we’re all painfully ignorant about the Constitution.”
Hadaway went on to say that organizers decided last year to start hosting a Constitution Day celebration to not only honor those who struggled to put together the document 225 years ago, but also to help others understand what it is all about.
“I’ve personally learned so much just from preparing all the educational materials that is in our booths,” Hadaway said.
But as much as the day was about celebration — with singing, dancing, food and even a Constitution-themed scavenger hunt — it was also about remembering that the document that so many have fought and died for isn’t about any one group of people, but about “We the People.”
Sen. Barry Loudermilk, R-Cassville, was among those who came to talk about the importance and history of the American system put forth through the framework that is the Constitution.
“It’s the spirit of the Constitution that we’re really here celebrating,” he said. “If our founding fathers, those men who gathered together in Philadelphia back in 1787 thought that we were celebrating something they did, or that Sept. 17, 1787, is the birthday of our new government, I think they would be offended because it strikes at the very heart of what they believed in.”
Loudermilk went on to explain that the government might have been created by the delegates who came to Philadelphia to debate how Americans would govern themselves, but that their role is minor compared to all those who have continued to make the system work throughout the generations: the American people.
“We’re celebrating not a document, not a piece of paper and not even those men who drafted it, because it was merely a proposal,” he said. “We’re celebrating ‘We the People’ that established this form of government.”
My reason for posting the url above.....just exactly WHAT do you consider "WELFARE"?
Each of those three groups — likely Obama voters, people who get federal benefits and people who don't pay federal income taxes — contains just under half of all Americans, in the neighborhood of 47 percent at a given moment. There's some overlap, but the groups are quite distinct.
Confusingly, Romney spoke as if they're made up of the same batch of Americans.
A look at the three groups:
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OBAMA VOTERS
What Romney said: "There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what."
He's right on the nose, according to the latest Associated Press-GfK poll: Forty-seven percent of likely voters say they support Obama. And 46 percent say they support Romney, essentially a tie. This number fluctuates from poll to poll and week to week and could shift substantially before Election Day.
Who they are:
—Most are employed: Sixty-two percent of the Obama voters work, including the 10 percent working only part time. A fourth are retired. Five percent say they're temporarily unemployed.
—Most earn higher-than-average wages. Fifty-six percent have household incomes above the U.S. median of $50,000. Just 16 percent have incomes below $30,000, and about the same share (20 percent) have incomes of $100,000 or more.
—They're all ages but skew younger than Romney's voters: Twenty percent are senior citizens and 12 percent are under age 30.
—They're more educated than the overall population: Forty-three percent boast four-year college degrees or above; 21 percent topped out with a high school diploma.
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PEOPLE WHO GET FEDERAL BENEFITS
What Romney said: "There are 47 percent ... who are dependent on government ... who believe they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it."
Whether they are dependent and believe they are entitled to anything is arguable, but Romney's statistic is about right — 49 percent of the U.S. population receive some kind of federal benefit, including Social Security and Medicare, according to the most recent Census Bureau data. Looking only at people who receive benefits that are based on financial need, such as food stamps, the portion is smaller — just over a third of the population. Many people get more than one type of benefit.
The biggest programs and their percentage of the U.S. population:
—Medicaid: 26 percent
—Social Security: 16 percent
—Food stamps: 16 percent
—Medicare: 15 percent
—Women, Infants and Children food program: 8 percent
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THOSE WHO PAY NO FEDERAL INCOME TAX
What Romney said: "Forty-seven percent of Americans pay no income tax."
Romney's about on target — 46 percent of U.S. households paid no federal income tax last year, according to a study by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. Most do pay other federal taxes, including Medicare and Social Security withholding. And they're not all poor. Some middle-income and wealthy families escape income tax because of deductions, credits and investment tax preferences.
Why they don't pay:
—About half don't earn enough money for a household of their size to owe income tax. For example, a family of four earning less than $26,400 would owe no taxes using the standard exemptions and deductions.
—About 22 percent get tax breaks for senior citizens that offset their income.
—About 15 percent get tax breaks for the working poor or low-income parents.
—Almost 3 percent get tax breaks for college tuition or other education expenses.
Who they are:
—The vast majority have below-average earnings: Among all who don't owe, 9 out of 10 make $50,000 or less.
—But some of the wealthy escape taxes, including about 4,000 households earning more than $1 million a year.
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http://news.yahoo.com/mitt-romneys-47-percent-breakdown-070451942--election.html
As of 2014 which federal agency will have the power to put you in jail if you do not buy a specific healthcare product?
Which industry performs better and stimulates the economy when run by the private sector rather than the federal government?
By what percentage has food stamp spending increased in the U.S. since 2002?
Because of the reckless spending of Congress, how much money does every man, woman, and child in this country owe to the U.S. federal government?
The 'income tax' (a direct tax) punishes hard work. What kind of tax system is fairer to all the working people in America and would also raise more revenue?
When the federal government promises great salaries and huge pensions to government employees, where do they get the money to fulfill those promises?
Contrary to the assertions in the post above, the Rome Tea Party had NOTHING to do with the festival whatsoever. In fact, they didn’t even attend the event to support or oppose it!
Friends of the Constitution is the sole producer of the Constitution Day Festival, and is a non-profit, non-partisan, and non-political foundation wholly devoted to encouraging civic literacy and engaging the citizens of NW Georgia in education about the Constitution. FOTC is not involved with or related to ANY other organization…..period.
Hopefully that ends all future attempts to link us to any other organization.
Our Founding Fathers demonstrated incredible wisdom by writing a document intended to RESTRICT the federal government rather than EMPOWER it, thus creating a Firm Foundation for Freedom in America….IF their document was honored and adhered to in the generations to come. However, because We the People have become largely ignorant of the tenets of this document, such that we rarely even know when it is being violated.
The intent of the educational booths was to point out that both political parties and all three branches of government in this country have been regularly violating the Constitution for many years now, resulting in the financial and political fiascos that we are now facing as a country.
I encourage the writer who has asserted that the educational booths had nothing to do with the Constitution to answer some key questions in order to determine whether or not Constitutional issues were presented at the festival.
Rather than offer our own “slanted, erroneous interpretations of the Constitution”, I urge the reader to ask themselves these questions and arrive at their own interpretations after studying the Constitution and all other related documents of the time:
• Does the Constitution have anything to say about ‘taxation’? If so, what, and what does it mean?
• If American citizens are going to be required to have health insurance soon (or face penalties or jail), how will our government get away with enforcing that mandate if the Constitution does not give them that right? Or does it give them the right?
• Is it Constitutional (not to mention ‘fair’) for the federal government to ‘compete’ with private industry using the virtually unlimited tax payer resources to do so? Did the founding fathers have a reason for restricting the federal government from this sort of endeavor? Could government’s consistent failure at running businesses be because it has no incentive to run a business with financial efficiency as does private industry? Surely the reader will find that this is a Constitutional issue since our entire economy depends on it!
• Does the fact that nearly half of the U.S. population now receives some sort of Welfare at the expense of the other half of the population have anything to do with the Constitution? Did the founding fathers purposely restrict the Robinhood –type powers of the federal government in hopes of avoiding bankrupting the U.S. in this manner as is currently happening?
• Did the founding fathers intentionally make the Constitution a document that would restrict the federal government in order to keep it ‘in check’? Was their intent to keep it from becoming another centralized behemoth that would run amuck over We the People as had occurred under English rule?
If dialogue had taken place between the writers of the above posts and the attendants at the educational booths, these individuals would likely know that there are two ways of interpreting the Constitution:
1) as a ‘texutalist’, ‘originalist’, or ‘Constitutionalist’ - ie interpreting the Constitution as closely as possible to the founding fathers’ original intent, determined by reading the Federalist Papers, their correspondence, and other founding documents.
2) as a so-called ‘living document’ – ie interpreting the Constitution however one sees fit in order to accommodate one’s desires and customs of the day.
FOTC makes no apology that we are “Constitutionalists”. Others who feel free to interpret the Constitution, not to mention change it at will, may be completely missing the whole point of the document….that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely, and human nature simply does not change even with the passage of time.
The same lust for power that fueled the English regime was guaranteed to find its counterpart in the new America unless some clever restrictions were put in place in the founding document and then adhered to for generations to come.
I encourage the writers of these posts to refute with supporting evidence any facts presented that they found erroneous. Be specific, not vague or general or emotional. Check your facts.
You are right about one fact being incorrect: when the educational material was written for these booths, 44% of Americans were on Welfare of some sort. As of this writing, it is now 47%. It is increasing so rapidly, it is difficult to keep up with. My apologies for that incorrect fact. Please feel free to point out other FACTS that were incorrect. We want the public to be as informed as possible and thus strive to be as accurate as possible using multiple sources to check accuracy.