I first met Amelia Island resident Deb Boelkes when I was invited to attend one of her “We the People” sessions to hear a Heritage Foundation guest speaker. I was impressed.
I’ve been to a number of these gatherings since. They’ve featured speakers ranging from US congressmen, state representatives and senators to nationally respected authors and diplomats. I’ve been as intrigued and fascinated with Deb as much as any of her featured speakers.
This is a very busy lady. In addition to her business, political and organizing activities she’s an author, who has a book coming out his fall. She’s also a keynote speaker who lectures about management skills. For 25 years, she created and led sales and marketing organizations within Fortune technology companies such as AT&T, IBM, and Arrow Electronics.
In 2015, she moved beyond the business world and founded “We the People”, now a 500-member grassroots organization based on Amelia Island that attracts attention throughout northeast Florida.
“I created We the People with a mission to rebuild traditional American values; encourage critical thinking; foster respectful, healthy dialog on matters of importance to our community, state and nation; and motivate citizens to vote,” she says.
This outspoken and articulate lady, who also found time last year to head up the Amelia Island Women’s Newcomers Club, doesn’t hold back. When she’s passionate about a subject she speaks her mind. For example, she recently hit back at what she feels is the overwhelming power of wealthy technology firms to restrict speech and dictate political thinking. Here’s what she had to say:
“I don’t know about you, but I’m getting pretty sick and tired of Google and Facebook restricting and/or suppressing content that doesn’t support their political agenda.
It’s bad enough that the mainstream media routinely chooses to not report on a wide variety of newsworthy items of the day. It’s bad enough that they report, over and over again, fake news created by unverifiable sources. At least we know they do this and at least we have a few alternative resources for news (i.e. OANN, Fox Business, Drudge Report, etc.). But when the one resource most of the world uses to research just about everything under the sun, Google, admits to controlling what we see or don’t see, that’s it.
Check out this article about an undercover video released just today by Project Veritas:
I cannot knowingly utilize services that use such Nazi and/or Communist regime-style tactics.
So, here is my first action step: I will be removing myself from Facebook [I’m tired of being hacked. I’m tired of my friends’, family and We the People members’ Facebook accounts being hacked. I’m tired of Facebook making it increasingly difficult for their users to report and get resolution on such issues while they benefit financially by “sharing” our data with whomever they choose in exchange for beaucoup bucks in ad and other streams of business revenue].
To those of you who are my Facebook friends, my pulling the plug on Facebook is nothing personal against you. I still “like” you. We’ll just have to utilize other means to communicate going forward.
Next action step: Finding alternatives to Google’s services will be a challenge of a whole different magnitude [I’m using Google’s Gmail to communicate with you right now]. They know they have us hamstrung. But no one, not even Google, is too big to fail. This is something I will have to start working on.
It will be interesting to see how Prager U’s lawsuit against Google, scheduled for August 27th in the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, plays out.
Here’s to our first amendment rights.”
Deb Boelkes
As I said, Ms. Boelkes doesn’t hold back. While toiling in the corporate world she was equally candid. She dedicated herself to what she explains was “transforming the American business world into a better place, one where employees could thrive and anticipate going to work daily.” Outside the corporate arena she continued that mission by founding “Business World Rising” a decade ago to accelerate the advancement of high-potential leaders to the top of “Best Place to Work” organizations.
To get on her mailing list for a “We the People” session go to Deb.Boelkes@BWRising.com or call Deb at 904/310-9602. The next session will be Monday, August 5, 5-7 p.m. at Deb and husband Chris’s home, 11 Sound Point Court (in Long Point on the Plantation) and feature Supervisor of Elections of Nassau County, Vicki P. Cannon who will discuss “Election Security, Safeguards, and Misinformation.” Unlike the far-left sessions populated by loud, screeching, fist-shaking, uninformed activists, attendees at “We the People” are a diverse, articulate, polite crowd respectful of opposing opinions and free speech.
Deb’s book — “The WOW Factor Workplace: How to Create a ‘Best Place to Work’ Culture” – will be released this fall. She collaborated with renowned psychiatrist and international best-selling author, Dr. Mark Goulston, in its writing. “The WOW Factor Workplace” includes candid, in-depth interviews with over a dozen notable leaders from award winning “Best Places to Work” – organizations with products, services and camaraderie so amazing that the best, brightest and most talented people line up to get in them,” she says. The book, she claims, also offers an abundance of helpful advice and action steps useful at any step on the career ladder.
“Now with the US economy at near full employment, and with a talented workers’ market upon us, the book that will help organizations of any kind become better places to work,” she adds. Go to http://www.BusinessWorldRising.com for book details.
This is an amazing lady.
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Who Pays For This Craziness? The loopy Democrat presidential candidates advocating free stuff such as a college education appear to leave out a few details. If the American electorate loses its collective mind and actually votes one of these loons into the Oval Office, that means the American taxpayer will be forced to foot the bill for his neighbor’s college-bound slacker kid. I guess that also means that we will pick up the tab for coaches such as the University of Alabama football coach Nick Saban’s $8.3 million-dollar salary; university presidents’ outrageous multimillion-dollar annual paychecks; and tenured professors who spend just a few hours a month in a classroom and earn in excess of $200,000 annually. If, as whacky Bernie Sanders and equally nutty Elizabeth Warren say, college will be free if they are elected, then I assume all money brought in by the college athletic departments will be turned over the federal government to help foot the bill. Or to keep costs low, maybe they could put everybody at the universities on their proposed minimum $15 an hour wage plan. How can anybody take these people seriously?
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The Best Place To Lose Your Wallet: Researchers turned in more than 17,000 wallets containing varying amounts of money at public and private institutions in 355 cities in 40 countries around the world to measure whether people would report the wallets to their owners.” The lowest rate of reporting was in China; of the top 10 “honest” countries, nine were European. Researchers found that in virtually all countries people were more likely to return wallets that contained the most money. Source: Science via Georgia Public Policy Foundation.
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Ammunition For Thought: If you have been listening to the Democrat presidential candidates you have heard their opposition to guns and the Second Amendment. Their stand enables violent, immoral and intellectually bankrupt social-justice warriors screaming to prevent others from bearing arms with which to defend themselves from groups of left-wing vicious extremists.
Think about the black-masked Antifa thugs brutally attacking conservative gatherings; leftist college campus groups chasing and beating right-wing conservative speakers; Democrat representatives like Maxine Waters calling for public harassment of administration officials while their leaders like Nancy Pelosi say nothing; the hounding of Trump cabinet members, elected Republican representatives and administration spokespeople out of restaurants; leftist groups harassing conservative radio and TV show hosts and their families at their homes; staffers of Democrat congressional representatives releasing the home addresses of Republican senators and representatives; the shooting of Congressman Steve Scalise; the violent anti-police screeds and destruction of property by the Black Live Matters; appearances by Democrats with the vile anti-Semitic white-hater Louis Farrakhan, and the disgusting race-baiter Al Sharpton, and so much more.
These violent loons shriek in outrage about plastic straws while defending Rep. Ilhan Omar’s, (D-MI) incessant anti-Semitic and pro-Islamic terrorism remarks such as describing the 9/11 terrorist attacks as an incident in which “some people did something” and promoting a boycott of Israel. The other Minnesota anti-Semite, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), emphasizes her anti-Jewish diatribe saying: “There’s always kind of a calming feeling, I tell folks, when I think of the Holocaust, and the tragedy of the Holocaust, and the fact that it was my ancestors — Palestinians — who lost their land and some lost their lives, their livelihood, their human dignity, their existence in many ways, have been wiped out, and some people’s passports.” She left out that during World War II the Palestinian leaders allied with Hitler and that they reacted with the same notions about wiping out the Jewish people.
Antifa hijacked the name of a German organization known as Antifaschistische Aktion, a front for the Communist party in Germany, a group spawned in Moscow and known for political repression, and violence. It was banned in Germany in 1956 by the same court that prohibits pro-Nazi organizations in that country. These are half-baked fascist idiots who seek forcible suppression of opposition while the Portland police stand by and watch.
Jonah Goldberg was way ahead of this in his 2007 book “Liberal Fascism” comparing the left’s policies to those of Hitler’s National Socialism and Mussolini’s Fascism. We should be very afraid. The Democrat far left is an extremely dangerous and frightening crowd and Americans, including the Amelia Island locals that buy into this irrational claptrap are an uninformed and threatening group.
Based on the spittle-flecked speeches from leftists like newly elected fruitcake Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, wannabe presidential candidates Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Bernie Sanders, etc. it’s obvious the left — wild with hate and spite — will launch frenzied attacks on anyone and anything they fear, distrust or dislike. They’ve become a frightening, unreasonable, leaderless, vigilante mob and nobody is safe. These are very scary people.
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Drinking, Dining & Dancing: A friend of mine recently dinned at a popular area restaurant and ordered what the menu listed as a ribeye steak at “market price” then suffered “sticker shock” when the bill arrived following the meal. He said, “I’m not going to name the establishment, but when specials are verbally delivered (without prices) and I order the ‘ribeye’ – I just assumed it was priced for the planet earth. I’ve never in my life had a $50 cut of beef on Amelia Island… still haven’t. This won’t happen again. The sides were fries with Parmesan cheese (didn’t eat them) and a broccoli floret wrapped with a piece of bacon.” I tend to side with my friend, as I certainly would not order a fifty-buck steak, except on a corporate expense account, but I would also have asked what the “market price” was before ordering. While shopping in one of the three local grocery stores the other day I thought about my pal’s 50-dollar ribeye and decided just for fun to put together a ribeye steak dinner for four based on the store’s prices. Ribeye steaks were on sale for $7.99 a pound. I found russet potatoes for 69 cents per pound and asparagus for $2.99 a pound. At these prices I figured I could feed four people at my house providing each person a grilled 16-ounce ribeye, a baked potato and a quarter pound of grilled asparagus for a total of $40.09. Since I haven’t hit the $50 mark, I’ll add a tossed salad of romaine lettuce, with slivered carrots and grape tomatoes. And because I’m a generous host I’ll toss in two bottles of Trader Joe’s “Three-buck Chuck” Merlot, binging my total to $49.39, but since I’m trying to stay under the $50 Market Price, I’m forgoing the Champagne flute of sorbet topped with crème de cassis. I have no idea where the restaurant gets its beef, if it’s aged, comes from Kobe Japanese mooing cows, or whatever, and I’m sure that’s a factor in its pricing. So is overhead, such as electric, servers, rent, etc., still 50 bucks for a 14-ounce steak seems pricey to me. But, maybe I need to get out more.
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