On 232nd, reflecting on how country is doing

Despite problems, most say U.S. is in good shape

Friday, July 4, 2008

Click here to enlarge this photo Staff photo by GARY SMITH Dallas Hamilton of Willow Wood, Ohio, pays taxes and higher fuel costs through his work bringing energy-saving improvements to a power plant in southern Charles County. E-Mail This Article | Print This Story Click here to enlarge this photo Staff photo by DARWIN WEIGEL Katelyn Nolan, left, accompanied by her friend Hannah McGreevy, both of Lusby, foresees troubles ahead from the U.S. debt, through the devaluation of its currency on world markets.

The bulk of the document adopted on July 4, 1776, by the English colonists who were soon to be revered as a new nation’s Founding Fathers, lists a run of grievances outlining how Britain’s rule of its New World territories was oppressive and unresponsive.

The Revolutionary War that followed led to the creation of the United States under the Articles of Confederation and ultimately the U.S. Constitution, and established the nation’s own government to serve its citizens and their needs. How much better the government is achieving those ends than the one that ruled the Colonies is open to debate in a free society in 2008.

At a truck stop off U.S. 301 at the southern tip of Charles County, Ronnie ‘‘Smitty” Smith of Waldorf pumped diesel fuel at $4.74 a gallon into a Freightliner tractor-trailer on an unseasonably hot afternoon and shared his concerns about who the federal government is truly looking out for.

‘‘In ’98, it was 84 cents,” Smith said as he fueled up during one of his runs between Baltimore and King George, Va.

Smith said the powers that be ‘‘already know” what the problems are behind the jump in fuel prices.

‘‘I think they’re getting a kickback somewhere down the line,” Smith said, adding that he believes the complicity reaches the top tier, the nation’s president and vice president. ‘‘I think Bush and Cheney [are] in it,” Smith said, ‘‘in cahoots.”

The solution includes pursuing research toward ‘‘finding alternative energy,” Smith said, combined with the need to ‘‘kick all those people out that aren’t doing their job.”

Dallas Hamilton, a 53-year-old businessman from Willow Wood, Ohio, said after he pulled in at the helm of a 2000 Peterbilt that government’s responsiveness to the citizenry includes a fundamental flaw that was a pivotal concern in the Declaration of Independence.

‘‘It’s very much like it was then, the way our taxation is now,” Hamilton said. ‘‘There is nothing in the Constitution that says we absolutely have to pay [income] taxes ... but they can still do it. It’s not mandated anywhere in the Constitution.”

The 16th Amendment grants the federal government the power to tax income.

The government’s use of those revenues includes, however, creating mandates and initiatives for projects including one involving Hamilton’s firm — moving equipment for building rail trusses to improve the coal-carrying efficiency at the power plant across the highway.

‘‘It’s a good thing. It’s good for all of us,” Hamilton said. ‘‘It’s providing a lot of work for a lot of people, and cleaning up the air.”

On that issue, Hamilton said, the government is showing it can be responsive, financially and environmentally, to the people’s needs.

‘‘The government is making allowances for that,” he said.

Charles Williams, a Waldorf resident making runs into Virginia in a 2005 Peterbilt, said the government has been responsive in combating terrorism.

‘‘This place is still a much better place to live than a lot of other countries around the world, but we still have our problems,” Williams said, particularly with fuel prices and home foreclosures.

The solution, he said, is ‘‘electing the right officials, and keeping tabs on them. Keep them accountable for the taxes that we pay.”

At Point Lookout State Park in southern St. Mary’s County, a recent Friday afternoon found James Franklin of Washington, D.C., studying at a picnic table in preparation for his bar exam to become a lawyer in the capital city. He compared the ideal of patriotism during the revolutionary period to how it’s applied today.

‘‘Patriotism to the colonists back then was being here in a free country and attempting to establish their own view of law, how it would relate to the people and their fundamental rights,” Franklin said. ‘‘Now, that parallel is similar here because that same issue is present. People are concerned about their fundamental rights and whether they are being violated.”

He added, ‘‘Sometimes if you question the issue of fundamental rights, it [leads to] questioning of your patriotism to the country. If you protest and go against certain actions, it may be a question on your patriotism.”

Examples cited by Franklin include challenges to the presidential election results in Florida in 2000, and more recent protests of the war in Iraq and treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay. The answers, he said, eventually reveal themselves through public opinion.

‘‘Give it back to the voice of the people. Let the people speak. That’s the solution,” he said. ‘‘It’s always worked in a democracy, like the United States of America. It’s figured its way out.”

Ronald and Kathryn O’Gorman, enjoying an extended visit to St. Mary’s from their home in Monmouth County, N.J., said at the park that issues from Colonial times are still relevant today include exports and imports, and tariffs on commodities — like oil.

‘‘I can see how people might make that comparison,” Kathryn O’Gorman said, noting the discontent expressed more than 230 years ago.

‘‘People, especially merchants, were furious,” she said. ‘‘The British government was giving special privileges to import [and] export companies, and that is really what got people here very upset.”

In Great Britain now, Ronald O’Gorman said, petrol costs the equivalent of $12 a gallon. ‘‘It’s about 85 percent taxes,” he said.

‘‘Some things never change,” his wife added.

On a sunny midweek afternoon, Bob Sealey, 83, of Huntingtown walked on the Solomons boardwalk along the Patuxent River.

Sealey arrived in Solomons in 1945 to work at its mine-test station, and now works part time for the county at a boat pumpout station.

‘‘We’ve got too much government ... telling us too much what we have to do,” Sealey said.

Aid to other countries during a time of serious domestic need was among his chief concerns.

‘‘We have so much trouble in this country, and we’re sending all the help over there,” Sealey said. ‘‘Look at all the flooding we have going on right here in our country.”

He added, ‘‘I still think we have the best government in the world. I’d go back in and fight for it. There’s good and bad in all of it.”

The fighting in Iraq and the rationale offered for its start concerns Sealey.

‘‘The government kind of lied to us,” he said. ‘‘I sure would like to see them bring our boys home.”

Katelyn Nolan, enjoying an ice cream cone on the boardwalk, said high gas prices are part of broader economic problems.

‘‘The [value] of the dollar is lowering because of all the debt that we owe,” according to the 17-year-old Lusby resident, who will begin her senior year at Patuxent High School later this summer.

‘‘The U.S. dollar used to be what you wanted in other countries for trade,” she said, ‘‘but now it’s not.”

Kristine Anderson of Sacramento, Calif., visiting with her mother and aunt to see Anderson’s son, a Navy pilot, said she thinks the nation’s government is ‘‘far advanced” from the days of Colonial rule, and that public apathy is the real problem.

‘‘A lot of Americans don’t take the opportunity to vote,” Anderson said. ‘‘They don’t get involved in their community, in changing things that they want changed.”