Musings

Chrysler and General Motors…end of an era. Now that the government and their union representatives have taken over two of the increasingly ill named “Big Three” auto manufacturers, I am announcing that I will never purchase a GM or Chrysler product again. Two of our largest companies have rolled over in the face of threats and coercion and become part of the Federal Government. I can’t imagine what kinds of vehicles these two entities will churn out in the future and I can’t imagine me wanting to own one. Basically it is the end of domestic automobile manufacturing in the private sector with Ford becoming the “Big One” auto manufacturer. The last government built car I can think of was the Yugo. I guess it is either a Ford or Japanese make for me from now on.


New York City fly by….Can’t help but wonder if this was done for a school project for one of the Obama children who needed a picture of the Statue of Liberty for show and tell. It does show one of two things…either utter contempt for the people of New York and by extension the people of the United States, or the White House staff is made up of complete idiots. Since this is a Democrat administration I am sure they will find someone to blame and fire.


Swine Flu…I am pretty sure the United States is the only country in the world that would rather see the disease spread so as not to do anything politically incorrect like seal the southern border. Better that people die than a protected group be offended. Not an hour had gone by after the announcement of the Mexican child’s death in a Houston hospital that the Obama Administration announced they were doing everything possible to prevent the spread of the disease…except for keeping infected people out of the country.


Arlen Specter……..I don’t think Senator Specter could have won the Republican Primary next time anyway. I will be surprised if he wins the Democrat primary either…why vote for an ex-RINO as the Democrat nominee when there are certainly actual Democrats who have been waiting in line for a chance to run for that seat.


Torture…I think the word is tossed around too freely. In the eyes of Republicans, torture involves screaming. In the eyes of Democrats, it involves heavy sighing. So instead of worrying that someone might lose blood or a digit, we are wringing our hands over the volume of the radio, the temperature of the room and the threat of a caterpillar. Any event I can recall from my fraternity initiation doesn’t constitute torture.


Pirates…I think the solution to the piracy situation has to involve cruise missiles.


Socialism…I believe the new President is a socialist. I believe that he believes that constant government growth is for the greater good. I believe that people’s intelligence should be judged as much by the conclusions they reach as by the mechanism they use to reach them. If the President is looking at the same set of conditions I am and his conclusion is to grow government and tax the rich then he isn’t intelligent.


Rich people….are not the enemy. The fellow who signs my check is a rich guy and I can’t see any scenario where taking money away from him is going to make me more prosperous. What worries me most is that I can see the Obama Administration and the lefties in the Congress deciding that the only way to address the massive debt they are doubling down on, will be a wealth tax. That is where they take over pensions and 401Ks and move you into a Treasury backed version of Social Security. Such a move would be catastrophic and I encourage old people everywhere to stockpile guns and ammo. At least they might be able to get something to eat with a pistol.

…two nations….with liberty and justice for one of them

In light of the recent mentioning of secession by the Governor of Texas, I would like to throw in my two cents. Our country is now sharply divided between those who think the government should control our lives and those who don't. The Democrats assume everyone's an idiot and cannot be trusted to run their own lives or spend their own money. Considering the people the voters put in control of our once great country this argument may have merit. I for one don't want the government taking half my paycheck and doling it out to the parasite class. I believe there are no guarantees in life. People not willing to expend the same effort as I do, making a go at living in a free country should not be carried along as so much excess baggage on my dime.

The promise of America was that people were free to succeed or fail on their own volition. We are now entering the era where the majority thinks it can vote itself the contents of the treasury. Roughly half the people now believe they are entitled to the wealth created by others based solely on their having been born.

Currently the United States has been taken over by a mob. The people running the government think that government can’t be too big or taxes too high. They believe that people are entitled to material stuff despite the fact that they expend no effort. They think they have a right to a house even if they can’t pay for it. They don’t believe in American exceptionalism. They are perfectly happy to have the country swamped with illegal immigrants even if it bankrupts the governments of the several states.

We are quickly approaching an impasse. This country’s government has survived longer than any other nation in history based on individual liberty and economic freedom. It has been a good run. The time has come for us to seriously consider a split. Two nations! One would keep the current Constitution, be a Republic, have limited government, free markets and unfettered capitalism. The other would write a new Constitution, be a Democracy, and have a large bureaucratic central government, controlled markets and socialism. Everyone would be happy.

I would opt to live in the Republic. We would have no IRS. We would rid our nation of the Department of Education, the Department of Commerce, and HUD. We would have a national sales tax, school choice, be a "right to work" nation, promote business and the competing political parties would be Republicans and Libertarians. The Democracy would have all the current government plus the addition of a Department of the Environment, a Department of National Health, keep their kids in a failing public education system, raise taxes above 50%, outlaw wealth and the competing political parties would be Democrats and Greens.

The Democracy would have universal healthcare, free day care, and free education through college. Of course they would have the confiscate their citizen's property to pay for it, since most if not all of the wealth producers would live in the Republic. The Republic would have to send energy to the Democracy so they wouldn't freeze in the dark since the Democracy would never allow power plants or oil exploration within their territory. The Republic would have a standing army that we would use to guard our borders. The Democracy ran by people who "loathe the military" would soon have a population consisting of a large group of illegal aliens who would be given the same benefits as their citizens, plus the right to vote. I imagine the criminal class would opt for the Democracy where they would be safe from the death penalty and could ply their trade knowing the populace was unarmed.

The way this should happen is the competing factions would construct the makeup of the two countries on paper and the individual states would vote on which one it would join. Those living in the states that voted opposite their beliefs would have a right of immigration for 5 years following the split. Of course, eventually, the Republic would have to re-absorb the Democracy. You see, once they squander the wealth of their people, we would either have to take them in or let them starve.

ORGAN DONOR

This is my comment on how to pursue organ donation in today’s society. I have a problem with the idea that people don’t become organ donors. So why are so many people dying waiting for organs?

According to data available as recent as this morning at 9:25 AM (April 10th, 2009) there were 93,945 people on the various waiting lists for organs. Between January and August 2008 there were 10,026 donors supplying organs and tissue for 19,719 transplants. Quite frankly this is not acceptable to me and shouldn’t be to anyone.

There are several roadblocks to being a donor. One is that our desire indicated on our driver’s license isn’t always honored. It varies from state to state. In some places you can indicate that you are a donor on your driver’s license and still be required to have a living will and an organ donor card. There are national laws and there are local laws designed to discourage organ donation.

The main roadblock to universal organ donation is a 38 year old law called the Uniform Anatomical Gift Act of 1968. This ambiguous law says in part that people have the right to determine whether they will be donors prior to death. The passage causing most of the problem is “A gift of all or part of the body under section 2(a) may also be made by document other than a will. The gift becomes effective upon the death of the donor. The document, which may be a card designed to be carried on the person, must be signed by the donor, in the presence of 2 witnesses who must sign the document in his presence. If the donor cannot sign, the docu¬ment may be signed for him at his direction and in his presence, and in the presence of 2 witnesses who must sign the document in his presence. Delivery of the document of gift during the donor’s lifetime is not necessary to make the gift valid.”

This pretty much makes the Driver’s License signature null and void. I don’t know about you but I didn’t take along two witnesses to get my drivers license.

Where I am going with all this is that I believe the moral and ethical standards of organ transplantation have changed since 1968. I believe that we should err on the side of those who die awaiting organs instead of allowing them to die because not enough people are willing to jump through the hoops necessary to become bonafide donors. Let’s rethink this process. Let us pass new legislation making organ donation automatic and putting provisions in place to allow people with moral, religious or even irrational reasons for not wanting to be an organ donor to opt out. Let them bring the two witnesses to the courthouse and get their “not a donor card.” In the absence of any documentation let’s do the transplants.

Also, we should not allow family members to show up at hospitals wielding veto power over organ donation at the time of death. Emotional declarations of opposition by someone other than the donor have no place in this process.

What I am proposing is an extreme position countering the current extreme position of the government. I understand that it is the duty of our representatives in government to take these two positions and complicate them in order to satisfy various special interests. The interests in this particular argument are those of us who want to save as many lives as possible using organs and tissues that would otherwise be buried or cremated, and those who want to sacrifice lives so that those who want their organs and tissues buried and cremated aren’t offended. If that sounds like an uncompromising position on my part….it is.

One argument by the bury or burn advocates is that if organ donation was automatic, there would be a greater danger of doctors pulling the trigger early on harvesting organs. I suspect if every person was a potential donor the need to be in a hurry for a particular set of organs would be unnecessary because a lot more people die than need hearts, lungs, livers and kidneys. Plus if you don’t trust the medical profession, opt out. I think medical science if protected from nationalization will eventually have the ability to grow organs in the lab, but in the meantime, we can close the gap and get rid of the organ lottery.

OPPOSING THE COLLECTIVE

“Collectivism doesn't work because it's based on a faulty economic premise. There is no such thing as a person's "fair share" of wealth.” P.J. O’Rourke

We don’t elect governments to decide winners and losers and we don’t elect governments to decide what is fair and what is not fair. Governments big enough to enforce some faction’s notion of fairness is big enough to annihilate freedom and liberty and a good number of the people as well.

Why don’t I like today’s liberalism or today’s liberals?

They operate from another false premise: People are entitled to the things others produce. People are not so entitled. The founders of this country were very careful not to enumerate into the Bill of Rights…stuff. Everything in the Bill of Rights involves a right to something you can do for yourself without the aid of government and without someone being forced to provide a material good. Speech, Assembly and Religion do not require anything from anyone. The Right to Bear Arms doesn’t guarantee the firearm. The Right to counsel doesn’t promise the services of a lawyer. That is a misinterpretation of the intent of the founders put into law by lawyers for lawyers. Rights to things cannot be legally assigned without violating the very nature of unalienable rights from the Declaration of Independence and the spirit of American Constitutionalism.

We are individual citizens of a Republic. We are not wards of the state and we are not owned by the state for the purpose of providing our efforts to others by force. Government is force. We are responsible for our own lives and our own actions. Our actions create consequences and it is not a valid function of government to instruct our fellow citizens to sacrifice themselves to mitigate our consequences. If I want a house, it is incumbent upon the government to remove itself as an impediment to my earnings or my opportunity to build that house. I am not entitled to the house. It is my responsibility to obtain the property, materials and labor to produce said house. If I enter into a contract with my fellow citizen either individually or in the form of a lending institution, then I am responsible for faithfully executing the terms of that contract.

If I don’t pay my mortgage then I should lose the house to the lending institution. My inability to honor my contract is not my neighbor’s liability. I am responsible for my actions and liable for my debt. My neighbor is not nor am I liable for my other neighbor’s debt. Any activity by the government that seeks to change this dynamic is un-American. We the people do not have a right to vote ourselves the efforts of our fellow citizens. Any government that does so will and should be opposed by force if necessary. The citizens of this republic who join with the government in an effort to use the power of government to take from me to give to you will be opposed with the expressed purpose of defeating them. Such people are not a part of any acceptable economic solution.

Another issue I have with modern liberalism is over the notion of immigration. Today’s liberals tell me that because we are a nation of immigrants then we should not be allowed to enforce our immigration laws. I heard this from the Speaker of the House. Because they cannot politically win the debate to remove our immigration laws from the books, they work at cross purposes to the law to prevent the enforcement of said laws. There is also the bogus argument that the historic existence of immigration somehow obligates the United States to always allow continuous immigration. This isn’t true or in my opinion desirable. If I am pouring water into a glass and the glass becomes full, I stop pouring even though historically, pouring water into the glass was a desirable activity.

Liberalism seeks to continually grow government. It seeks more and more dependency on government activity to the point where we create a permanent underclass of citizens who no longer have an incentive to create wealth for themselves. This makes them a burden on the ever growing institutions of the state and then imposes further burdens on the productive citizens to support those who believe they are entitled to the efforts and productivity of other citizens. I repeat…they are not. Managing to become born does not give you title to my possessions and efforts. Liberals court these people for their votes. So we have a parasitic relationship between those dependent on the state and those producing enough to maintain said dependency. We are quickly reaching a point of diminishing returns. In New York City the mayor tells us that 40,000 people out of 8 million provide the vast majority of revenue to the city. How can we think to place further burden on such a fragile system?

It is my job to provide for my family and for those whom I choose to provide for. It is my job to provide food, housing, medicine, communications, transportation, clothing and any material thing I can obtain in a free market. It is the responsibility of my fellow citizen to do the same. All men are created equal and the equality we possess is both in opportunity and responsibility. We are not equal in any sort of measurable sense. Government cannot make us so. If I work harder and smarter, I will obtain more material wealth. It is not the place of government in a free society to ensure outcomes among the citizens. Quite frankly the people we elected aren’t smart enough to make such decisions and they don’t have a right to make such decisions. The mob of democracy cannot give that right to a government. Any attempt should result in the removal of said government.

These are not points for debate or compromise. I don’t negotiate with thieves, slave masters or enablers of tyrants. To me the current slide into collectivism is like a water glass filled with poison and my water glass is filled with pure clean water. Where is the compromise? How much poison am I to take into my glass to satisfy those who would see me weakened and stripped of my freedom? No…I am not having a debate here. Collectivism is evil. Individualism is good. It is black and white. The people who see us as a member of some sort of hive can hold their rallies and vote themselves power over my property and my efforts, but I will not participate. I would rather burn my possessions where they lie than have them confiscated by the government and shared among the looters of the world.

I used to be a liberal. I was a card carrying, slogan spouting, useful idiot of the political left determined to redistribute people's wealth that I had no part in creating. I was convinced of my own self-righteousness simply because I confused caring with helping. I didn’t realize that equality included the right to success or failure. I didn’t understand that government force is not compassion and that welfare isn’t charity. I thought that everybody who wasn’t lucky enough to be born me was somehow entitled to a share of what I had. I was a fool. I have since grown a brain. It hurt as the great hollow places filled with grey matter. It is a process I highly recommend.

A liberal is a person who believes society would be better served if he gets to reassign your wealth to someone of his choosing. A liberal believes that anything defined as deviant behavior by moral people is the good, and that moral people are bad. Some liberals believe that animals should have the same rights as people. A liberal believes that wealth is created at the expense of someone else. Liberals are more interested in the collective than the individual. Liberals define the individual by his group characteristics. Liberals are, in this day and age, racist-socialists who label people by race and ethnicity, create dependency on government for various groups, and then fight for the right of selected constituencies to remain dependent on the state.

In the 1970s, I defined myself as liberal. I was anti-Nixon, anti-Vietnam War, anti-government. I was out there walking for the hungry, writing for an “underground” newspaper, writing for the school newspaper, wearing a wide belt and work shirt, certain of the superiority of my views. Except for the wide belt and work shirt my position has not changed.

I did, however, refuse to grow up to become “them.” What happened to the radical left is that they have become the fat cat government bureaucratic left. They have become Nixon. They are the dudes in the Pentagon who bungled the war in Vietnam. They are the IRS, the jack booted storm troopers of the Justice and Treasury Departments. They are our “big government espousing, buy it on credit, relativistic, hypocritical parents.” The only real difference is that unlike our parents, they have done nothing to earn their complacency towards authority except whine.

PJ O’Rourke said it best. They hate people. They hate human beings and have dedicated their lives to making the Earth a miserable place to live. They have squandered the economic future of their own poor uneducated children and now our grandchildren.

Liberalism is a hollow unprincipled shell of a philosophy. It contains no concrete premises. It is the rich man’s communism, a way to get back at those who would seek to enjoy what they have created. It is a vindictive, elitist, guilt ridden, collective of people whose own lives are so empty and pointless that they feel compelled to drag everyone down to a common level.........theirs.

They have a zero concept of right and wrong. They don’t know the difference between can’t and shouldn’t. What is worse, they do not understand the difference between real compassion and government forced giveaway programs. Liberals believe that big government welfare programs are compassionate. They massage their own guilt at having material things by enacting policy that will take the assets of productive people and hand them over to the unproductive. Of the unproductive they ask nothing in return and anyone who disagrees with this approach they label as a racist, a fascist, a Nazi, or intolerant.

Liberals are famous for their tolerance of the intolerable. They see everyone who is not dirt poor as rich and everyone who is rich as an exploiter of the downtrodden...except themselves. It’s okay for them to be rich because “they care.” Makes me want to puke. Tolerance is a mantra to them. It doesn’t even require a qualifier. Tolerant of what? Anything except dissent. To disagree with the universally tolerant is to be bigoted and intolerant. Tolerance is one of those undefined goals of the liberal movement like “change” and “hope.”

One of the favorite words we all used when we were liberals is “fairness.” It is fairness, we said, that drives us to propose bigger government. What is fair, was us getting to divide the wealth, to redistribute what others worked to create. To determine how and where others should live, work and be educated or indoctrinated. The reason education in this country is so abysmal is because liberals don’t think it’s fair that some should be smarter than others or get more because their parents work harder to provide more. As a matter of fact, they seek a dumbed down populace to keep a plurality of voters to put them in office. The election of 2008 was the culmination of years of hard work. Now we have a plurality of voters who think “change” is a policy and “hope” is a direction.

The reason business isn’t providing 100% employment in this country is because liberals don’t really believe in capitalism. So they use government as a club to beat back industrial progress. The reason so many African Americans are poor and hopeless in the inner city is because without their struggle, liberals couldn’t get elected. So they pass laws, regulations and policies to keep them safely tucked away in America’s slums. Socialism is the new slavery, the Democratic Party members are the new overseers, the Federal Government owns the plantation. Emancipation will only come from free markets, unfettered capitalism and the realization that a tin cup is a poor substitute for self-reliance. Electing an African American President won’t change anything because he is more or less just another guilt ridden liberal wringing his hands over the plight of the poor. Obama understands that the policies of the welfare state will make things worse for “his” people, but he will do nothing to help them. He is committed to the cause.

When I was 17, I hung out with this guy who claimed to be a communist. He was definitely a left winger. He despised capitalism, though he enjoyed a house, a TV and food purchased in a free market. He was a few years older than me and I used to sit in his dirty little shack with his pictures of Mao and Lenin on the walls and listen to him talk endlessly about what was wrong with America and why communism was better. Today, we finally have something in common. We both have a shared dislike of liberalism. He called them useful idiots. I have dropped the useful part.

Today the label “liberal” is avoided even by liberals. It is not unlike the communists deciding that the word carried too much negative baggage and began calling themselves socialists. The reason liberalism is such a negative label is because it represents big, out of control government spending, high taxes, interference in the economic lives of citizens, collectivism and a kind of snooty self-righteousness that makes people nauseous.

These days, they have decided to define themselves as mainstream or progressive. That means if you disagree with them you are considered extreme, regressive or even oppressive. They get a lot of support for this point of view from the news media whose claim to be objective is weakened by their admission to being 90% liberal democrats. This election cycle the new media actively campaigned for the liberals, so chalk journalism up to another lost institution. We can put it on the shelf right next to the public schools.

I wonder how people will react when they realize that the paradise promised by the pie-in-the-sky socialist in the White House has no filling. Those who believe that the government is going to level the playing field and make their lives easier will surely be disappointed by the reality of what is coming. Easing the lives of those who have always taken the easy route will be no small feat to muster. How do you make life easier for someone who isn’t trying that hard?

Boycott Socialism

The problem with socialists is that you eventually run out of other people's money." ...Margaret Thatcher

Okay folks, I have had just about enough of Barrack Obama and the Democrats. Here is what I suggest. Let’s see how well the economy does if the conservatives and Republicans stop taking part in it. Stop buying anything. Let’s shut this socialist sucker down. I am not suggesting a symbolic gesture like the liberals do with their day without a Mexican or their day without gays. I am not talking about 50 people throwing tea bags in Lake Michigan. I am suggesting we take the next 6 months and “stop the motor of the world.” Let’s teach this community activist how real consumer economics works. Let’s show him the true meaning of shared sacrifice and social justice.

Don’t buy anything except food, guns, ammo, necessary pharmaceuticals and gasoline. Don’t buy any stocks, don’t buy any cars, don’t buy anything from General Electric, don’t buy anything advertised in the mainstream media and don’t do any business with any organization taking money from the federal government in these ridiculous spending sprees. No electronics, no appliances, no movies, no eating out, no new clothes, no new shoes…we will not buy anything that isn’t absolutely necessary to our day to day living. Another way government is growing itself is through raising fees. For the next 6 months we should try and limit any purchases or licensing that require paying fees to the government.

I know this will hurt business, but business needs to get on board and tell the government to get off all of our backs. We are an innovative people and the main incentive that keeps our standard of living high is profit motive. Obama and the Congress are working to destroy profit…let’s help them. If you are a business and you aren’t making a profit because the President of the United States is an imbecile, then you need to take one for the team and get on board with boycotting socialism. Don’t expand, don’t hire, don’t upgrade for six months. If you have to have layoffs for your workers…check your parking lot for Obama bumper stickers. If anything else it will get his name off the cars and out of sight on the roads.

Let’s give this Obamination some change he can believe in. The sooner this idiot fails the sooner we can get on with rebuilding the United States as a capitalist nation. We are not Europe. We don’t want socialism either in our banks or in our medical facilities. I don’t want my doctor to work for the government. Capitalism has given the United States a high standard of living and this President seeks to destroy that by redistributing misery and mediocrity. I for one am mad as hell and I am not going to take it any longer…not a moment longer. I can’t make anyone join this movement, but at my house consumerism is stopping today. What the President doesn’t understand is that consumerism is a byproduct of a strong economy and not its cause.

I never thought I would live to see a time when the people of the United States would turn their lives and futures over to the nanny state. When I was young we were taught that taking money from the government was a reason to feel shame and failure. In my view it still is. We aren’t bailing out our banks and automobile companies. We aren’t helping people stay in their homes. We are turning businesses and people into beggars. Money for nothing. Money to keep flushing down the toilet of poor management and bad decision making. Someone tell me what the car companies are doing differently with the taxpayer money that they weren’t doing with their own money? What has changed? They are still losing billions and asking for more. What has AIG done internally to stem the tide of losing money?

This President and his minions in the Congress are mortgaging your children’s and grand children’s future standard of living. They are doing it in the name of the collective…the state. I would call them communist but the actions of the communists were calculated. I don’t know if Obama has a clue what the consequences are of his actions but we have seen the results of increasing control over the means of production in places like Cuba, Eastern Europe before the fall of the iron curtain, and the old Soviet Union. Socialism cannot take hold unless we feed it…so let’s stop feeding it.

Corporate Structure

The view most people have of corporate America lacks perspective. I know this because I am both a consumer of the news and deeply embedded in corporate America. High enough to see what’s going on, low enough to be under the radar, mostly. Listening to the media, you get this picture of malevolent beasts sitting high up in corporate towers plotting against the lowly consumer. Of course, if you would just turn off the TV and think a minute, you would understand that the whole point of a corporation is to help the lowly consumer. Corporations hope that they will rise above their current station in life so they can buy more stuff. Nobody in any corporation wants to kill you. Relax. What they want to do is sell you gadgets. If you are poor they want to sell you a cheap gadget, if you are rich they want to sell you an expensive gadget…and in order to sell the most profitable gadgets, you need to prosper. Corporate America loves you.

Corporations are a lot like governments. While they aren’t efficient enough to purposely harm anyone; they are big enough to trip and fall on you, though seldom intentionally. In a normal corporate organization, there are kings, there are princes, and then there are peons. The kings make vague references, the princes make strategic decisions about those references and the peons make sure that no work occurs that makes their prince look bad. Then there are stockholders, a mix of peons, institutions, kings and princes. A corporate Vice President of a Fortune 500 company, whom I know, is fond of saying “when the elephants dance, the pigmies die.” You see, the princes are always jousting with one another in the hopes that they will one day become king. Princes are judged and rewarded on how little money they spend. Being a prince in a corporation is a very stressful position and is like dancing in a spotlight in the middle of a crystal store. You must keep dancing and you must break less than the prince dancing alongside you. (I am sticking to masculine pronouns and titles king and prince instead of queen and princess as those words have meanings not in play here.)

There is also an ego factor. Kings and princes do not get to be kings and princes without a whole lot of butt kissing and once you reach a certain level it is your butt being kissed. Those of us with souls who don’t kiss any butt or desire our own butt kissed are called managers and directors and that is all we will ever be called. So as a manager or director, one has to be careful around the kings and princes. They are always on the lookout for someone who isn’t properly in awe of their mere presence. If you are incredibly competent, efficient, and you always make your prince look good, he will often overlook some level of non-butt kissing or deference to his exalted position. However, you must be constantly aware of how their ego swings in this regard. In addition to being egotistical in the extreme, they are volatile and unpredictable. It is a short trip from golden boy to “who used to sit over there?”

The entire list of corporate levels are: intern, assistant peon, peon, senior peon, supervisor, assistant manager, manager, senior manager, director, senior director, prince, senior prince, executive prince, and king. This hierarchy, taken to an extreme can be a sign of an unhealthy business model. The company with the fewest layers between king and peon is much more likely to be consistently profitable. Everybody knows this. Those companies that have thick layers pretend it is not true. At the very top, just past king, is CEO. The CEO sets the tone for everything that happens. Usually such a person is rich beyond belief and doesn’t really have any skin in the fight. To them it is just a game. They don’t come to work thinking that if they lose their job they will lose their home or starve to death. They are in zero danger of losing anything other than ego. It is a little disheartening. Fortunately for us peons, the average CEO is really into the game and sees their reputation as every bit as important as us peons having something to eat.

Stimulus or Stimuless?

This started off as a political blog, a place to pontificate endlessly about what I thought was the best approach to governance. I used to write about all things political. You could name a topic and I could knock out 700 words for or against it barely breaking a sweat. However, I see by the last election that my efforts were in vain and the people did what they do best, they screwed up. They elected a ‘know nothing’ as President of the United States and leader of what’s left of the free world. I say “they” because I didn’t vote for the guy.

Barack Obama is a community activist who last week said with a straight face that business people should not count on making profits. And the fact that he didn’t get laughed off the world stage tells me we are in trouble not only as a country but perhaps as a species. Not only did people not laugh, as a matter of fact, a good number of people swooned in his presence and marveled at his brilliance. I am here to tell you that the economic downturn is the least of our worries. To paraphrase the comedian Ron White, ‘you can fix the economy, but you can’t fix stupid.’

So, instead of the daily dose of dazzling political commentary I have posted some of my recent literary efforts as I try and break into the author business. My timing could have been better as I see in the news where a lot of literary agencies are going out of business and the publishing houses are laying off editors in droves…the very people I want to send my work to. That is why I felt okay putting some of my writings on this blog. It isn’t as though it was all down at the printers being made into books.

I do have political opinions about current events. It’s just that I am having a problem stretching, “I think the stimulus package won’t stimulate” into 700 words. I could go into what constitutes economic stimulus and how most of the stuff in the awkwardly misnamed stimulus bill won’t stimulate anything other than the deficit this year and the national debt for years to come. As a matter of fact, it would seem to me that if you have properly identified the problem as a downturn in the national economy, in order to fix it, you would be looking for ways to not spend $900 billion instead of way to spend it. Usually when I have personal economic problems the first thing to cross my mind isn’t to borrow as much money as I can and spend it on stuff that I can’t use for 4 to 6 years out. That would be dumb.

I think it is interesting when some Republican points out just how moronic this new bill is, the answer they get from the Democrats is that Bush did the same thing with his economic stimulus bill. I had always thought that our mothers had taught us the lesson about “if George jumped off a cliff, I guess you would too” when we were little kids. I agree that the only thing worse than getting ready to spend $900 billion in borrowed money is having already spent $750 billion in previously borrowed money. But the fact that we did it is not an argument for doing it again only bigger. It is as though we are not doing the dumb thing George did only because our cliff is higher.

So I will use this blog as a place to put my attempts at literature and occasionally pipe up and point out something really dumb the government is doing. Unfortunately the people have elected the government. So I have to be careful what I say about the people if I ever want to be a bestselling author of serious literature. While the people who would appreciate my literary musings are generally smart people, this last election shows that their numbers are waning. Plus, if the stimulus bill does what it appears to be designed to do, most smart people would do well to save their money for food and heat and forgo books. If course when the heat goes off because it is environmentally taboo to burn fossil fuels, books might prove a pretty good source of fireplace fuel once the lawn furniture is gone.