With caution we say “Good Riddance” to 2020. With caution because if history teaches us anything, it’s that bad times rarely operate on the calendar year.

We here at this newspaper suffered our worst financial 12-month period of the 37 years I’ve been here. We have adjusted to some degree. As tough times progress, as I think they will, we will be forced to make more painful decisions, I suspect.

Many hometown newspapers across the nation have stopped their mail delivery during this COVID crisis, and gone to strictly digital publication only.

We’re not there yet. Hope to never be. Although the major expenses of our business (behind payroll to the staff) is you guessed it...printing and postage twice a week.

You may have noticed our newspapers have had fewer pages and fewer advertising pre-print inserts.

The lifeblood of a newspaper is advertising. We’re a small business. And, just like many small businesses across this nation, we took a gigantic financial wallop in 2020.

This Chinese Communist Party (CCP) virus “sneak attack” caught almost all small business owners underfunded and unprepared for such an economic shutdown.

Where do we go from here?

There was the “too big to fail” crisis of banks and mortgages that spilled out of California in 2008. Seems like our more toxic people and events come from that state, more and more.

There is plenty of blame to go around for our current situation. Mostly...a high percentage of our national elected officials reflect the morals and integrity of their constituents. In other words, according to old Ben Franklin: “We get the government we deserve.”

So, is there a less messed-up nation on this ever-shrinking globe we can move to? Not that I know of. At the moment, from what I can see, we’re the best that’s left, even with our $30 trillion in debt, with trillions and trillions more in the wings with the Green New Deal “injection” of tax dollars if Joe Biden and his crew take over.

Back in the good old days we had a gold standard that backed our debt with value. Reasonable federal balanced budgets went away long ago. Now fully 71% of our annual budget goes to pay for entitlement programs and interest on the national debt. That leaves 29% for EVERYTHING ELSE.

Now, we simply print more money, and hope that our ability to tax provides enough risk guarantee with our debt holders that we can make the interest payments every year. Common sense tells us that when the looming notes are called, we’re going to find out what hard times really are.

I pray it’s not so...but I don’t see how we are going to be able to avoid a depression at some point in our future.

The Great Reset and the Green New Deal

Now we’re getting bits of pieces on the George Soros sponsored master plan for a truly globalist society. It’s called the Great Reset in which the United States of America finally falls in line with the great new and improved Socialist plan. Bigger and better than ever. But this time...for the first time... guaranteed not to fail. If you read your history, you’ve seen it all before.

Got to say it...90-year-old George reminds me of the evil Emperor Palpatine from the Star Wars movies...the dark and mysterious dark-cowled “dark side” lord pulling all the strings of evil and deception. He certainly checks off all the boxes on his resume:

1. Atheist. 2. Thinks he’s a sort of god on earth...pretty sure he thinks he’s not going to ever die. 3. Spews disinformation around the globe on a daily basis through his dark underworld network. 4. Funds and marches out Marxists, anarchists and society-destroying rabble-rousers into our cities to spread chaos, death and destruction. 5. Sounds a, lot like the great deceiver the Bible tells us about. Lie and Deny...the earth is his realm.

And here’s another of the great plans he supports: Sell a complete load of nonsense to our nation that we must implement plans for our government to “invest” trillions and trillions of taxpayer dollars on this “Green New Deal”.

If implemented, the USA will lead the way by being the first great nation to foolishly destroy its own economy. This by the way plays directly into his Globalist plans, because from the wreckage will emerge the biggest and most valuable, piece to the World Domination puzzle.

Our nation would be bankrupt, and thrown on the trash. heap of history as the greatest society of individual freedom and wealth ever to deilver its own self-inflicted death. And it gets better for George and his crew: no more “ridicu-, lously dated” Constitution and Bill of Rights to get in the way of this great new reset.

I sincerely hope I am wrong on this. I pray it won’t be so. But I refer you back to that Ben Franklin quote about us getting the government we deserve.

So, we do what we can, and pray.

My friend John Johnson put it best: Hope is poisoned and destroyed when we focus on the raw sewage that pours out of the world’s major systems, in direct opposition to Scripture; when more of our perspective is driven by media than by the unchangeable Word of God.

If you exactly reverse the amount of time you spend watching television, movies, news, etc. with the amount of time you spend with God and his Word, your life will change. You cannot reject untruth if you don’t intimately know the Truth.

Hope-filled people change things because we think and act differently than hopeless people.

For whatever was written in the past was written for our instruction, so that we may have hope through endurance and through encouragement from the Scriptures.

“Now may the God of hope fill you with all the joy and peace as you believe so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”

by the power of the Holy Spirit.” Romans 15-4, 13

America is great because she is good.

As I get older, it occurs to me that there are four basic universal truths regarding our human race.

1.The human brain gives us a daily choice to simply exist, pursue evil, or pursue good. It’s God-given free-will.

2.Our approximately 6,000 years of written world history tells us of good kings and bad kings; good people and bad people. Our human history is filled with brutal reigns of terror, torture and subjugation. Without a single doubt...centralized power corrupts. 3.Consolidated for one...or a select

3.Consolidated power for only one...or a select few...inherently creates the search for even more corruption, power and money. There’s never enough. Sadly, it’s human nature.

A recent poll tells us that fully 75% of our voting nation opposes socialism. However, a small political percentage within our government is attempting to shove it down our throats.

Socialism is the second and final step to Communism. Then after Communism comes Dictatorship. Someone within the small power group has always plotted and murdered his way to the top.

4. Our Constitution is the greatest document ever written to give flawed mankind the best opportunity to keep the above three constants at bay. So, if we are patriots, we defend our freedom with all we have in us. Or, we simply go along with the flow, and look the other way and lose it all. To me, it’s truly that simple.