This land is NOT your land!

This land is NOT your land!

This land was NOT made for you and me!

These are the new lyrics to the well known folksong.

On PBS this week in Phoenix, you heard a grand old tune as sung by the Minstrels, the successor group to the 1960s The New Christy Minstrels. This Land is Your Land was written in the 1930s by, and sung by, Woody Guthrie, and resurrected in the 1960s by Randy Sparks.

It was sung at the time of the Cuban Missile crisis when people on the East coast were being told to store food and water, and to tune in to an important broadcast by President Kennedy. (It was only after the fall of communism in Russia did we learn, from previously secret files, that the local Russian military commander in Cuba had final authority to launch nuclear weapons against America in the event of an invasion of Cuba. He did not need to get permission from Moscow.)

That was another America, another era, long gone away where principles and character mattered. Now it's, "What's in it for me?"

Today, your land belongs to the HOA Board that is controlled by the special interest lobbyists, CAI, who have created and fought vigorously to repress your freedoms and rights. They spew grandiose platitudes in the name of a better America, but their personal agenda is one of a profit making bonanza. We don't need authoritarian governments, whose premise is that you can't trust your neighbor and that he must be watched vigilantly, and misinforming the people in order to make their "better America" happen.

We need,

This land is MY land, not your land!