Yup … it was a historical day in Iraq today with millions turning out to vote in the elections today. The voting was peaceful with even the Sunnis turning out in large numbers. True, this is not the first vote that the Iraqi people have turned out for … but today was the day they voted to elect a new parliament of 275 representatives which will begin the process to select the President, Prime Minister, the Cabinet and so on.
Today the Iraqi people elected their new representatives in their new governmental structure. History is being made today and, history that will likely affect the politics in a major area of the world that we now live in. While it may not affect some people directly … it marks a major change in the world that may well mark the beginning of something larger.
This isn’t a small story … it is a story with wide reaching ramifications … and yet, going to most of the network news sites tonight and what is their lead story? For most it’s the ice storm in the south eastern United States. OMG an ICE STORM …. 450,000 people in Georgia and the Carolinas are without power!
Yes, I was one of those 450,000 that lost power today … lost it for … oh … about 8 hours maybe? Give it a rest folks … okay, that story may be news, but … even for those affected by the storm (which was hardly that bad) it isn’t the biggest news story of the day … not even close. Heck, there are other national stories that are more important than the ice storm (like the things going on in DC … immigration bills, and such) and I don’t believe that most of them are of more importance than what’s happening (well, happened at this point) in Iraq today.
This is what we’ve been fighting for … a free Iraq … and we’re winning (despite what Howard Dean and the many of the Democrats would like you to believe), we’re succeeding in the mission, and we’re having a positive impact in the lives of MILLIONS of people. And yet most of the news media is treating it as a ‘page 2 or 3’ story.
Why is this? Is the media afraid to show our success in Iraq? Are they afraid that it would cause the current President (and thus his political party) to look better in the eyes of the American people?
Bias is showed both in what you chose to say, and in what you choose not to say, by what you choose to give importance to, as well as what you choose to downplay. Even as our goals in Iraq are being accomplished the media chooses to focus on other stories.
But what would you like to bet that if there had been wide spread violence during the elections that the news would be the top story of the day … edging the ice storm to a (likely) distant second or, perhaps, even farther down the list. I would almost quarantine that 25 people being killed in a car bomb at a poling place would have made headlines and front pages across the country.
Now I could be wrong … tomorrow’s news papers could have large banner headlines about the success of the elections in Iraq … but I’m not holding my breath. Particularly in the case of the Atlanta paper which I’ll be amazed if the front page even mentions that there WAS an election in Iraq ….
You will hear about every gun fight, every car bomb, every US soldier killed (rarely will you hear about the Iraqi soldiers dying, unless it’s in a car bomb, or other mass attack) you won’t generally hear about the schools being built, the bolstered economic growth and increased standard of living. You will rarely hear how the life of the average Iraqi is already better than it was before the invasion and overthrow of Saddam. You see a lot of reports of certain politicians saying ‘we can’t win in Iraq’ and that we should ‘withdraw our troops now’ … but rarely do you hear the reports of the soldiers IN Iraq saying that we are winning the war … the stories of the troops volunteering to go back for second tours in Iraq because of the positive effects that they are seeing in that country.
Now our troops aren’t going to be shipping out of Iraq tomorrow, but we’re closer to a point now where we can start cutting back our presence. Every day more Iraqi soldiers are trained, and with the government in place the Iraqi people will be in a much better position to begin managing their own security. I expect that next Christmas we will still have a military presence in Iraq, and it will still be a significant number of troops. But it will likely be less than what we currently have deployed and that number will be dwindling further as more and more Iraqi troops are able to replace them in their duties.
As for the ‘War on Terror’ itself I believe that we are at a point best described by Winston Churchill, “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”
The ‘War on Terror’ is a far reaching goal … it may be that human nature itself dictates that it can never truly be won because there is no decisive enemy to face, no capital that you can topple to end the power of the enemy. Even should we find Osama Bin Laden and destroy Al Qaeda there will be others to take their place.
That does not, however, mean that we should pack it up and call it quits … that would only encourage the terrorists further because they work on the mindset that if we back down in any way, they’ve won.
Again a quote of Churchill comes to mind “Never give in--never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.”
So long as terrorists confront us with force we must never back down … never give in … because to do so is to hand them victory on a silver platter, and in so doing we may as well cuff ourselves in chains and toss them the keys. We can not seek to appease them for each victory they accumulate through appeasement will only encourage them to try for more. We can not negotiate with terrorists, for such action will be seen as weakness and exploited further in their next action. We must forever be ready to defend ourselves and our freedoms from those that would take them from us … be it through force, terror, or guile.
Thursday, December 15, 2005
Wednesday, December 14, 2005
So whats up
With all the entries lately? Why the sudden burst of Blog entries after such a dry spell? Well I’m in training, so to speak.
Starting in January I will be taking on a personal challenge to write … to write more than I have ever written before. I am taking the NaNoWriMo challenge (though not during the usual NaNoWriMo month)
The long and the short of it is this … 1 novel …. 50,000 words … 31 days to write it.
Many of you know me … and you also know that I’ve always had a desire to write. I write little short stories that never get finished … that get a good start going and get people interested and then vanish into the abyss of my laziness never to be heard from again.
My wife has occasionally hounded me about this and invariably I get fired up and start writing … or start working toward writing. Either I dig up a story that I started writing before, or I start planning out a story that I’ve got running laps around my skull at the moment. In the case of the first option I usually end up re-reading my previous work and set down to edit it … the most common result is that I may add one or two pages onto the work, but most often I just finish re-writing it before something comes up that pulls me away for a couple of days and the writing momentum is lost. Or in the case of the second option, I outline and plan, write out character backgrounds and descriptions, define the world and then something comes up that pulls me away and that usually means that it gets filed away with the other projects.
This time, however, I am trying something different. This time my wife came across the NaNoWriMo site and pointed me to it. I was interested and she suggested that I pick up the book ‘No Plot, No Problem’ by Chris Baty (Also the founder of NaNoWriMo).
Chris lays out an outstanding argument in the book. While the book is aimed at helping people through the concept and completion of writing a 50,000 word monster in a month, the concept itself actually applies quite well to any creative endeavor.
Chris’ argument is basically that the only thing standing between me and getting a book finished is a deadline, or more accurately the LACK of a deadline.
Certainly he doesn’t paint the project as a cakewalk … and he points out many of the pitfalls that people face during the ordeal, and suggests ways to get around them. He talks about his experiences participating in NaNoWriMo since its founding in 1999, and he has snipits of advice and stories from other NaNoWriMo successes.
So after reading the book and seeing that I firmly fall into many of the pitfalls that he describes befalling what I call the ‘casual’ writer I decided … you know what … I can do that.
And I can and will make it. I’ve set the month of Jan for my novel in a month insanity because putting it off any farther than that is simply procrastinating and not accomplishing what I’m trying to do. One of the main points in NaNoWriMo is that there is no advanced preparation … the idea is to go into it blank. (the main reason for this is that the more advanced preparation that you do, the more attached to the story you become, and therefore the more likely you are to want to write it right and therefore will fall into the trap of editing … the idea is to get a complete first draft down, not a finished manuscript.)
What does this have to do with all the rants and rambles lately? Call it training … I’m getting used to the idea of writing on a nightly basis. And practicing sitting down at a set timeframe and writing without a significant amount of preparation. Of course these blog entries are significantly different from writing a novel in that I’m not going for an ongoing cohesive storyline. But they still get me used to using this timeframe for writing, used to focusing on something and putting my thoughts onto paper (or in this case on the monitor).
The next question becomes … what will happen to the blog in January? Well, blogging will probably slow down significantly as much of my ‘free time’ will be devoted to pouring my story out of the fires of my mind’s forge and beating it into some semblance of shape. I will, however, try to get some entries put up throughout the month … if nothing else to try and keep my regular readers informed on the status of the experiment. And of course if I get pointed to, or otherwise find a juicy article to rant about I may be able to spare some time to burble a few thoughts on the subject as well.
I will tell you now that I won’t tell you about my story … at least not until Feb … and more likely some time in March after I’ve had a chance to go through and chisel off some of the rougher edges. Not that I wouldn’t like to talk to you all about my story, but it’s one of the steps that they recommend to help keep from feeling pressured to perform (this is one of the main things that creates a lot of the pitfalls to the ‘casual writer’ … the feeling that it has to be right).
So … by the end of January I will be a novelist … not a published novelist to be sure, and the monster I write may never see the light of day, but I will be a novelist none-the-less. My plan from there is to take the same deadline concept and apply it (though with a longer deadline, or more likely a series of deadlines to keep myself going) to getting some of my other stories written, edited, and published (even if it’s just self published on a small scale.)
What will become of the one month monster? Only time will tell … I plan on taking Chris’ advice on the matter and waiting at least two weeks after the Jan 31st deadline before reading it over again and deciding if the beast is something that can be dressed up and taken out, or just needs to be buried and forgotten.
It’s going to be a rollercoaster … lets hope that I meet the height requirement….
Starting in January I will be taking on a personal challenge to write … to write more than I have ever written before. I am taking the NaNoWriMo challenge (though not during the usual NaNoWriMo month)
The long and the short of it is this … 1 novel …. 50,000 words … 31 days to write it.
Many of you know me … and you also know that I’ve always had a desire to write. I write little short stories that never get finished … that get a good start going and get people interested and then vanish into the abyss of my laziness never to be heard from again.
My wife has occasionally hounded me about this and invariably I get fired up and start writing … or start working toward writing. Either I dig up a story that I started writing before, or I start planning out a story that I’ve got running laps around my skull at the moment. In the case of the first option I usually end up re-reading my previous work and set down to edit it … the most common result is that I may add one or two pages onto the work, but most often I just finish re-writing it before something comes up that pulls me away for a couple of days and the writing momentum is lost. Or in the case of the second option, I outline and plan, write out character backgrounds and descriptions, define the world and then something comes up that pulls me away and that usually means that it gets filed away with the other projects.
This time, however, I am trying something different. This time my wife came across the NaNoWriMo site and pointed me to it. I was interested and she suggested that I pick up the book ‘No Plot, No Problem’ by Chris Baty (Also the founder of NaNoWriMo).
Chris lays out an outstanding argument in the book. While the book is aimed at helping people through the concept and completion of writing a 50,000 word monster in a month, the concept itself actually applies quite well to any creative endeavor.
Chris’ argument is basically that the only thing standing between me and getting a book finished is a deadline, or more accurately the LACK of a deadline.
Certainly he doesn’t paint the project as a cakewalk … and he points out many of the pitfalls that people face during the ordeal, and suggests ways to get around them. He talks about his experiences participating in NaNoWriMo since its founding in 1999, and he has snipits of advice and stories from other NaNoWriMo successes.
So after reading the book and seeing that I firmly fall into many of the pitfalls that he describes befalling what I call the ‘casual’ writer I decided … you know what … I can do that.
And I can and will make it. I’ve set the month of Jan for my novel in a month insanity because putting it off any farther than that is simply procrastinating and not accomplishing what I’m trying to do. One of the main points in NaNoWriMo is that there is no advanced preparation … the idea is to go into it blank. (the main reason for this is that the more advanced preparation that you do, the more attached to the story you become, and therefore the more likely you are to want to write it right and therefore will fall into the trap of editing … the idea is to get a complete first draft down, not a finished manuscript.)
What does this have to do with all the rants and rambles lately? Call it training … I’m getting used to the idea of writing on a nightly basis. And practicing sitting down at a set timeframe and writing without a significant amount of preparation. Of course these blog entries are significantly different from writing a novel in that I’m not going for an ongoing cohesive storyline. But they still get me used to using this timeframe for writing, used to focusing on something and putting my thoughts onto paper (or in this case on the monitor).
The next question becomes … what will happen to the blog in January? Well, blogging will probably slow down significantly as much of my ‘free time’ will be devoted to pouring my story out of the fires of my mind’s forge and beating it into some semblance of shape. I will, however, try to get some entries put up throughout the month … if nothing else to try and keep my regular readers informed on the status of the experiment. And of course if I get pointed to, or otherwise find a juicy article to rant about I may be able to spare some time to burble a few thoughts on the subject as well.
I will tell you now that I won’t tell you about my story … at least not until Feb … and more likely some time in March after I’ve had a chance to go through and chisel off some of the rougher edges. Not that I wouldn’t like to talk to you all about my story, but it’s one of the steps that they recommend to help keep from feeling pressured to perform (this is one of the main things that creates a lot of the pitfalls to the ‘casual writer’ … the feeling that it has to be right).
So … by the end of January I will be a novelist … not a published novelist to be sure, and the monster I write may never see the light of day, but I will be a novelist none-the-less. My plan from there is to take the same deadline concept and apply it (though with a longer deadline, or more likely a series of deadlines to keep myself going) to getting some of my other stories written, edited, and published (even if it’s just self published on a small scale.)
What will become of the one month monster? Only time will tell … I plan on taking Chris’ advice on the matter and waiting at least two weeks after the Jan 31st deadline before reading it over again and deciding if the beast is something that can be dressed up and taken out, or just needs to be buried and forgotten.
It’s going to be a rollercoaster … lets hope that I meet the height requirement….
Tuesday, December 13, 2005
On death penalties and timeframes....
Okay … I’m sure that most of you probably already know about the whole Tookie Williams story and the controversy surrounding his execution last night. I’m not going to discuss the details of the conviction here or the years of appeals or the last minute fight for a stay of execution. Those details can be readily found elsewhere. No, I’m here to talk in broader terms about the situation …
Tookie Williams was a thug … plain and simple. He was convicted of the murder of 4 people with overwhelming evidence and sentenced to death by a jury of his peers. This conviction was upheld by the courts through a full battery of appeals. Despite the claims at his execution that the state ‘executed an innocent man’ Tookie was far from innocent. He was the co-founder and leader of the Crips street gang in Los Angeles … he has never apologized or shown remorse for his acts … he has at least 10 accounts of extreme violence and threats to guards during his stay in prison.
‘But he wrote children's books and spoke out against gang violence.’ True … and I hope that it had a positive effect on some children in the society. But it doesn’t change the fact that he still praised militant black leaders, and it doesn’t change the fact that he was convicted of 4 counts of murder and sentenced to death.
The problem in this particular case is the timeframe. Tookie Williams was tried and convicted in 1981 … his execution took place in 2005 … 24 years later. The only time that someone should sit and rot in a prison for 24 years is if they have been sentenced to 24+ years in prison … not if they’ve been sentenced to death.
The appeals process … particularly in death penalty cases … needs to be short. Personally I say give them … I’ll be nice … 5 years (personally I feel it should be shorter … like a week but most people wouldn’t agree to that). If they can not come up with convincing evidence that they are innocent within 5 years then it’s time for them to get their ticket punched.
One of the problems of allowing them to ‘chill’ for 24 years is that people forget. It’s one thing to forget the passion of the moment and look at things from a more rational perspective … it’s something completely different to forget the evidence and the case as has largely happened with this particular case.
Of course you’ve got the fringe groups and the Euros that oppose the death penalty all together … but that’s not something I can agree with. I’m sorry, call me a barbarian, but I believe that the harsher penalties have greater effect on maintaining social order than the softer penalties.
It is the fear of punishment that prevents most people from doing things … be that punishment from a deity or punishment from government or other social structure. And face it … the ultimate punishment is death … no earthly force can do anything to you beyond that … now lets just move up the time frame to something a bit more reasonable.
Tookie Williams was a thug … plain and simple. He was convicted of the murder of 4 people with overwhelming evidence and sentenced to death by a jury of his peers. This conviction was upheld by the courts through a full battery of appeals. Despite the claims at his execution that the state ‘executed an innocent man’ Tookie was far from innocent. He was the co-founder and leader of the Crips street gang in Los Angeles … he has never apologized or shown remorse for his acts … he has at least 10 accounts of extreme violence and threats to guards during his stay in prison.
‘But he wrote children's books and spoke out against gang violence.’ True … and I hope that it had a positive effect on some children in the society. But it doesn’t change the fact that he still praised militant black leaders, and it doesn’t change the fact that he was convicted of 4 counts of murder and sentenced to death.
The problem in this particular case is the timeframe. Tookie Williams was tried and convicted in 1981 … his execution took place in 2005 … 24 years later. The only time that someone should sit and rot in a prison for 24 years is if they have been sentenced to 24+ years in prison … not if they’ve been sentenced to death.
The appeals process … particularly in death penalty cases … needs to be short. Personally I say give them … I’ll be nice … 5 years (personally I feel it should be shorter … like a week but most people wouldn’t agree to that). If they can not come up with convincing evidence that they are innocent within 5 years then it’s time for them to get their ticket punched.
One of the problems of allowing them to ‘chill’ for 24 years is that people forget. It’s one thing to forget the passion of the moment and look at things from a more rational perspective … it’s something completely different to forget the evidence and the case as has largely happened with this particular case.
Of course you’ve got the fringe groups and the Euros that oppose the death penalty all together … but that’s not something I can agree with. I’m sorry, call me a barbarian, but I believe that the harsher penalties have greater effect on maintaining social order than the softer penalties.
It is the fear of punishment that prevents most people from doing things … be that punishment from a deity or punishment from government or other social structure. And face it … the ultimate punishment is death … no earthly force can do anything to you beyond that … now lets just move up the time frame to something a bit more reasonable.
Monday, December 12, 2005
Kids
Okay … most people that read this on the regular basis probably know me and already know that I have exactly zero children (unless you count my 2 dogs, Kodo and Pepper). As such this is what one would call a ‘my view as an outsider looking in’ ramble. My observations both from public observation of other parents and their children and through talks with people that I know that have children of their own.
Yeah … it isn’t exactly political, or reactionary, or maybe not even relevant in the world at large, but it’s what’s on the plate for today … it’s better than cold leftovers after all.
This ramble was brought about through a combination of things … the time of year (who doesn’t think of kids around Christmas), a good article that my wife linked to me a week or so ago about kids in public places/stores, and talking to a co-worker about his two kids at home.
Since there’s a plethora of things in the article I’ll start with that and just try to weave other things into the ramble as I go along while still keeping it coherent. The article ran on MSNBC Dec 6th and was titled “Behave or else! Unruly kids in public stir debate” It was, as the title says, the issue of children misbehaving in public places … primarily restaurants, café’s and coffee shops, but it applies equally well across the board.
It starts by talking about the controversy surrounding a sign placed on the door to a café in Chicago which read “Children of all ages have to behave and use their indoor voices.”
Personally I don’t see anything ‘controversial’ about that statement. He isn’t ‘banning’ children from the café as some of the upset people in the community say … he is simply stating that he requires that they behave. And in my opinion I believe that children should behave in public … period … and their parents should enforce that … too few seem to these days (which would be what prompted the posting of the sign in the first place).
One mother says, however, that “…there are certain moments that all kids and parents have — and sometimes your kid is going to lose it in a public place.”
But the problem here is that she’s missing the point. Everyone understands that ‘stuff’ happens … that isn’t the problem … the problem isn’t that your kid ‘looses’ it in a public place … its how you HANDLE the situation when they do. Yes, there are going to be times when a child, even the best behaved child in the world, is going to act up in a public situation (unless of course you never take them into a public situation until they’re like 16 or so) and people (even us non parents) understand it … the problem is when the parents of the child in question either don’t try to remedy the situation, or worse aren’t around (or are just too oblivious) to even realize that there IS a situation.
As the owner of the café in question says “It’s not about the kids, it’s about the parents who are with them. Are they supervising and guiding them? I’m just asking that they are considerate to people around them.”
Whoa … now THERE’s a controversial opinion. He wants people to be considerate to others! I mean the nerve! Doesn’t he know that these people are taking their kids out to public places to let them run wild while they have other matters to attend to? Doesn’t it take a village to raise a child?
No.
Certainly it helps … but it’s not a requirement … especially when the other people in the village didn’t sign up for child rearing duty.
But that’s one of the main problems today … people want the kids (or think they do) … but they don’t want to raise them … they ship them off to government schools to be raised and given an education (well, given what passes for an education in a government school). I’m tempted here to turn this into a rant about some of the wonderful stories of American Government School System and its glorious failings, but I’m going to refrain from that mess until I have some more recent news articles (or updates on older ones).
Then again … I’m of the opinion that sending any child to the government to be educated is a horribly BAD idea … but that is, in part, because I am largely distrustful of government in general and also in part due to the astounding failure of the government to handle most things that it tries to handle. (Both of these reasons are also why I shudder at the thought of governmental health care.)
Back to the question of children in public … I look back at my parents and how things were when I grew up. I know that my parents never allowed me to misbehave in public the way that I see many parents letting their children behave … I was taken from the store/restaurant/theater and out into the parking lot at the least … I may also have received a sharp smack on my backside to go with it. And you know what I learned pretty quick … that acting up in public was a BAD idea.
Of course, I was raised in a different time … a time when parents COULD discipline their children … these days if you look at your child cross-eyed then social services will be knocking on your door within 24 hours. You can’t discipline children … OMG that might lead to them having something akin to moral foundation or something … can’t let that happen. Worse even … they might, *gasp*, feel bad about something, that’s not good for kids to feel bad about anything … and if they DO feel bad about something, well there’s probably a prescription for that.
You know … my parents spanked me … not every day … and looking back, probably not even every time I deserved it … but certainly when they felt it was warranted for a punishment. And you know what? I haven’t turned into a mass murdering psychopath or an anti-social hermit … I wasn’t scared for life. What I did learn was discipline … and that breaking the rules had a price … and that the only one responsible for my actions was me.
There are family restaurants, and there are ‘non family’ restaurants … there are places to take you kids where you can let them ‘be kids’ and there are places where you take them that they need to learn to behave and be respectful of others … that’s part of growing up … and teaching them the difference is part of being a parent. Knowing the difference is part of being a considerate adult.
Yeah … it isn’t exactly political, or reactionary, or maybe not even relevant in the world at large, but it’s what’s on the plate for today … it’s better than cold leftovers after all.
This ramble was brought about through a combination of things … the time of year (who doesn’t think of kids around Christmas), a good article that my wife linked to me a week or so ago about kids in public places/stores, and talking to a co-worker about his two kids at home.
Since there’s a plethora of things in the article I’ll start with that and just try to weave other things into the ramble as I go along while still keeping it coherent. The article ran on MSNBC Dec 6th and was titled “Behave or else! Unruly kids in public stir debate” It was, as the title says, the issue of children misbehaving in public places … primarily restaurants, café’s and coffee shops, but it applies equally well across the board.
It starts by talking about the controversy surrounding a sign placed on the door to a café in Chicago which read “Children of all ages have to behave and use their indoor voices.”
Personally I don’t see anything ‘controversial’ about that statement. He isn’t ‘banning’ children from the café as some of the upset people in the community say … he is simply stating that he requires that they behave. And in my opinion I believe that children should behave in public … period … and their parents should enforce that … too few seem to these days (which would be what prompted the posting of the sign in the first place).
One mother says, however, that “…there are certain moments that all kids and parents have — and sometimes your kid is going to lose it in a public place.”
But the problem here is that she’s missing the point. Everyone understands that ‘stuff’ happens … that isn’t the problem … the problem isn’t that your kid ‘looses’ it in a public place … its how you HANDLE the situation when they do. Yes, there are going to be times when a child, even the best behaved child in the world, is going to act up in a public situation (unless of course you never take them into a public situation until they’re like 16 or so) and people (even us non parents) understand it … the problem is when the parents of the child in question either don’t try to remedy the situation, or worse aren’t around (or are just too oblivious) to even realize that there IS a situation.
As the owner of the café in question says “It’s not about the kids, it’s about the parents who are with them. Are they supervising and guiding them? I’m just asking that they are considerate to people around them.”
Whoa … now THERE’s a controversial opinion. He wants people to be considerate to others! I mean the nerve! Doesn’t he know that these people are taking their kids out to public places to let them run wild while they have other matters to attend to? Doesn’t it take a village to raise a child?
No.
Certainly it helps … but it’s not a requirement … especially when the other people in the village didn’t sign up for child rearing duty.
But that’s one of the main problems today … people want the kids (or think they do) … but they don’t want to raise them … they ship them off to government schools to be raised and given an education (well, given what passes for an education in a government school). I’m tempted here to turn this into a rant about some of the wonderful stories of American Government School System and its glorious failings, but I’m going to refrain from that mess until I have some more recent news articles (or updates on older ones).
Then again … I’m of the opinion that sending any child to the government to be educated is a horribly BAD idea … but that is, in part, because I am largely distrustful of government in general and also in part due to the astounding failure of the government to handle most things that it tries to handle. (Both of these reasons are also why I shudder at the thought of governmental health care.)
Back to the question of children in public … I look back at my parents and how things were when I grew up. I know that my parents never allowed me to misbehave in public the way that I see many parents letting their children behave … I was taken from the store/restaurant/theater and out into the parking lot at the least … I may also have received a sharp smack on my backside to go with it. And you know what I learned pretty quick … that acting up in public was a BAD idea.
Of course, I was raised in a different time … a time when parents COULD discipline their children … these days if you look at your child cross-eyed then social services will be knocking on your door within 24 hours. You can’t discipline children … OMG that might lead to them having something akin to moral foundation or something … can’t let that happen. Worse even … they might, *gasp*, feel bad about something, that’s not good for kids to feel bad about anything … and if they DO feel bad about something, well there’s probably a prescription for that.
You know … my parents spanked me … not every day … and looking back, probably not even every time I deserved it … but certainly when they felt it was warranted for a punishment. And you know what? I haven’t turned into a mass murdering psychopath or an anti-social hermit … I wasn’t scared for life. What I did learn was discipline … and that breaking the rules had a price … and that the only one responsible for my actions was me.
There are family restaurants, and there are ‘non family’ restaurants … there are places to take you kids where you can let them ‘be kids’ and there are places where you take them that they need to learn to behave and be respectful of others … that’s part of growing up … and teaching them the difference is part of being a parent. Knowing the difference is part of being a considerate adult.
Thursday, December 08, 2005
But the Supreme Court said we could!
Okay, this isn’t what I had intended on writing tonight … maybe I’ll cover it in a section to this rant later, maybe I’ll run out of time and put it into an article tomorrow. While looking around for interesting tidbits I came across two of the words I most hate to see together … Eminent and Domain.
You may be sick of hearing me ramble on about it, but if you want me to stop you’re going to have to do one of three things:
Now the basis of Eminent domain is not the problem … the problem is in the abuse of the power by government. The power to seize land for governmental use, it seems, wasn’t enough … they needed the power to seize land for private development in order to increase their power (ala tax base … spending power). The idea being that the government knows what the best use of all land is, and ownership grants no rights.
And there in lies my problem with the situation – The government does not generally care about what is best for the citizens, rather it cares what will give it the most money and power while still getting it re-elected.
If you strip away the right of ownership then what does freedom become? If I am free to say what I want, but the government can walk up and take my house away at their whim, am I really free?
[‘But it’s not at their whim’ some say … ‘they have to have a project that needs the land … and they have to compensate the owners.’ … Yeah, right, whatever. If they don’t want to buy at the price I set, then they don’t get to buy, but the government can come in and say, ‘here’s compensation now get off Property_Developer_03921734’s property’ … considering that they are not even required to pay the ‘appraised value’ used for property taxes the amount of compensation could be (and usually is) a small percentage of the market value of the property in question.]
The latest governmental land grab to make the news is Riviera Beach, Florida where the mayor is saying that they are going to “rescue and relocate individuals” like some urban wildlife conservation project.
Another, often used justification, is that the areas are ‘slums’ … but then what happens when all the ‘slums’ have been redeveloped into high rise, expensive, condos and restaurants and some developer comes along and wants to develop a new luxury condo, but there are all these middle-class suburban homes in the way whose owners don’t want to sell at the cut rate price he’s offering?
Another reason that the ‘poorer’ sections are often targeted is that they can rarely afford any legal counsel in the matter, are less educated, and don’t garner as much ‘sympathy’ as people of more means generally want the areas cleaned up anyway and therefore are willing to turn a blind eye to the abuse of power because it isn’t them being effected.
The fact of the matter is that these people OWN these homes and the property on which they are built. It should be their choice if they wish to sell or not, if the price is appropriate or not … this should not be the choice of the government. But that is where we stand in this country.
The Supreme Court has spoken on the matter and their ruling was that it was acceptable for state and city governments to seize private property for the sake of private development. Thankfully this has sparked a LOT of debate over the issue of eminent domain, and has prompted many states to pass constitutional amendments to prevent (or at least curtail) the abuse of this power.
Where this will go from here remains to be seen, but I fear that if people do not wake up and realize that the government is slowly gathering all of the power of wealth and ownership to itself, then we will soon find ourselves living at the whim of the government. Employed by the government, housed by the government, fed by the government, slaves to the government.
You may be sick of hearing me ramble on about it, but if you want me to stop you’re going to have to do one of three things:
- Stop reading the blog
- Revoke the right to freedom of speech so that the government can lock me and any others that speak out against eminent domain, or
- Do something to stop the governmental land grab.
Now the basis of Eminent domain is not the problem … the problem is in the abuse of the power by government. The power to seize land for governmental use, it seems, wasn’t enough … they needed the power to seize land for private development in order to increase their power (ala tax base … spending power). The idea being that the government knows what the best use of all land is, and ownership grants no rights.
And there in lies my problem with the situation – The government does not generally care about what is best for the citizens, rather it cares what will give it the most money and power while still getting it re-elected.
If you strip away the right of ownership then what does freedom become? If I am free to say what I want, but the government can walk up and take my house away at their whim, am I really free?
[‘But it’s not at their whim’ some say … ‘they have to have a project that needs the land … and they have to compensate the owners.’ … Yeah, right, whatever. If they don’t want to buy at the price I set, then they don’t get to buy, but the government can come in and say, ‘here’s compensation now get off Property_Developer_03921734’s property’ … considering that they are not even required to pay the ‘appraised value’ used for property taxes the amount of compensation could be (and usually is) a small percentage of the market value of the property in question.]
The latest governmental land grab to make the news is Riviera Beach, Florida where the mayor is saying that they are going to “rescue and relocate individuals” like some urban wildlife conservation project.
Another, often used justification, is that the areas are ‘slums’ … but then what happens when all the ‘slums’ have been redeveloped into high rise, expensive, condos and restaurants and some developer comes along and wants to develop a new luxury condo, but there are all these middle-class suburban homes in the way whose owners don’t want to sell at the cut rate price he’s offering?
Another reason that the ‘poorer’ sections are often targeted is that they can rarely afford any legal counsel in the matter, are less educated, and don’t garner as much ‘sympathy’ as people of more means generally want the areas cleaned up anyway and therefore are willing to turn a blind eye to the abuse of power because it isn’t them being effected.
The fact of the matter is that these people OWN these homes and the property on which they are built. It should be their choice if they wish to sell or not, if the price is appropriate or not … this should not be the choice of the government. But that is where we stand in this country.
The Supreme Court has spoken on the matter and their ruling was that it was acceptable for state and city governments to seize private property for the sake of private development. Thankfully this has sparked a LOT of debate over the issue of eminent domain, and has prompted many states to pass constitutional amendments to prevent (or at least curtail) the abuse of this power.
Where this will go from here remains to be seen, but I fear that if people do not wake up and realize that the government is slowly gathering all of the power of wealth and ownership to itself, then we will soon find ourselves living at the whim of the government. Employed by the government, housed by the government, fed by the government, slaves to the government.
It's Christmas, deal with it
What is it with people taking offense to Christmas? I’m sorry, but guess what, it’s a holiday and this is a free country, deal with it. There is no ‘right to not be offended’ and there is no law against the public display of religion. Christmas is a religious holiday and it is a holiday widely celebrated by elaborate displays of ornaments and lights. I am not Jewish, but I’m not offended by public Hanukah displays, Kwanza displays, or any other displays … yet every year there are reports from across the country about people getting bent out of shape over Christmas displays.
Last year there was several reports, but one I remember specifically hearing about was the demanded refusal of a donated manger scene from the front of a county office. Of course the display was cited as ‘offensive’ and ‘in violation of the separation of church and state.’ … Now, if the county refused to display donated Hanukah displays, or things along side the manger scene, then fine they can’t display the manger either … but that wasn’t the case, and county spokesmen welcomed people of other beliefs to donate displays for various holidays … not just Christmas/Hanukah. In other words the ‘offended’ people were ‘offended’ because it was a public display of religion, and the ‘violation of church and state’ people were just uneducated.
[For those that don’t remember or haven’t read some of my past articles I have previously pointed out that ‘separation of church and state’ as most people try to define it, doesn’t exist. The constitution simply states that the government can not pass a law that REQUIRES the worship of a specific religion, or a law which BANS a religion, nor can they prosecute people based on their religious beliefs (since a religion can not be against the law) … thereby a religious display on government property is allowable, provided that equal treatment is allowed for all religious beliefs.]
This year there have been reports of major retailers purposefully removing ‘Christmas’ from all store displays … even to the extent of labeling their trees ‘Holiday’ trees. (I believe that at the time of this writing this has been officially denied and at least one hardware store chain has changed their ‘holiday trees’ back into ‘Christmas trees’.) There is also a report of a homeowner’s association requesting the removal of a nativity scene from the front lawn of one family.
Normally I’d say, well they more than likely agreed to the rules of the association when they moved in (whether they realized it when they signed it or not), but in this case the rule that they are cited as being in violation of (which prohibits lawn ornaments, statues or outdoor art from being placed on the lot without prior approval of the board of directors) is being selectively enforced. That is the association is only asking that the nativity scene be removed, not the other statues that are technically violations of the rule as well.
To their credit, the management company that enforces the rules did say that they would not pursue the issue unless they received another complaint.
Oh, and the complaint?
“Although I'm not offended by it, I take issue about advertising personal beliefs and interests by putting them on display whatever the belief or interest may be."
Translated this works out to ‘even though I’m saying that I’m not offended by it, I’m offended by it.’
Guess what … it’s a free country … deal with it. The founding fathers gave us freedom OF religion, not freedom FROM religion.
Reference:
It's away with the manger - Thanks, Ssark.
Last year there was several reports, but one I remember specifically hearing about was the demanded refusal of a donated manger scene from the front of a county office. Of course the display was cited as ‘offensive’ and ‘in violation of the separation of church and state.’ … Now, if the county refused to display donated Hanukah displays, or things along side the manger scene, then fine they can’t display the manger either … but that wasn’t the case, and county spokesmen welcomed people of other beliefs to donate displays for various holidays … not just Christmas/Hanukah. In other words the ‘offended’ people were ‘offended’ because it was a public display of religion, and the ‘violation of church and state’ people were just uneducated.
[For those that don’t remember or haven’t read some of my past articles I have previously pointed out that ‘separation of church and state’ as most people try to define it, doesn’t exist. The constitution simply states that the government can not pass a law that REQUIRES the worship of a specific religion, or a law which BANS a religion, nor can they prosecute people based on their religious beliefs (since a religion can not be against the law) … thereby a religious display on government property is allowable, provided that equal treatment is allowed for all religious beliefs.]
This year there have been reports of major retailers purposefully removing ‘Christmas’ from all store displays … even to the extent of labeling their trees ‘Holiday’ trees. (I believe that at the time of this writing this has been officially denied and at least one hardware store chain has changed their ‘holiday trees’ back into ‘Christmas trees’.) There is also a report of a homeowner’s association requesting the removal of a nativity scene from the front lawn of one family.
Normally I’d say, well they more than likely agreed to the rules of the association when they moved in (whether they realized it when they signed it or not), but in this case the rule that they are cited as being in violation of (which prohibits lawn ornaments, statues or outdoor art from being placed on the lot without prior approval of the board of directors) is being selectively enforced. That is the association is only asking that the nativity scene be removed, not the other statues that are technically violations of the rule as well.
To their credit, the management company that enforces the rules did say that they would not pursue the issue unless they received another complaint.
Oh, and the complaint?
“Although I'm not offended by it, I take issue about advertising personal beliefs and interests by putting them on display whatever the belief or interest may be."
Translated this works out to ‘even though I’m saying that I’m not offended by it, I’m offended by it.’
Guess what … it’s a free country … deal with it. The founding fathers gave us freedom OF religion, not freedom FROM religion.
Reference:
It's away with the manger - Thanks, Ssark.
Friday, December 02, 2005
The keyword is Legal
Okay … I’ve been quiet too long but I’ve just been too lazy to put fingers to the keys and actually rant lately. Not that there hasn’t been suitable material to rant about, or that there haven’t been things in the past weeks and months that got my blood boiling. There is always something worth a good rant … rather this was a plethora of excuses to procrastinate, a slew of ‘I’ll rant about that when I get a little more time’ or ‘well my work schedule is changing in a few weeks, it will be more convenient after that.’
True to life, however, things passed by and in the end most of the things I had been waiting on to start writing again ended up not happening … work didn’t lighten up and the schedule change that was supposed to free up more time fell through.
None of that, however, is here nor there in turns of what I set out to write about today….
Immigration … it’s been in the news … the President gave a speech on it a couple of weekends ago. There are as many opinions out there on the issue as there are people to ask … and likely even more than that given most politician’s propensity for double talk.
First, I am pro-immigration. That is to say that I believe it would be a horrible disservice to the founding concepts of this country to adopt a closed boarder policy. I have nothing against people immigrating to this country and working hard to achieve a better life. That is one of the principles on which this country thrives.
What I don’t have any use for are those that come here illegally … yes most come here for the same reasons … to work hard and earn a better lives for themselves. But they do so without any respect for the dream that they are striving toward, because they have disrespected the legal in favor of the easy, much as a thief will break into a house to steal rather than work, save, and purchase the item for themselves.
(And if you just thought to yourself, ‘Oh, he just called all ‘undocumented workers’ thieves!’ take a 2x4 and slam it into your head a couple times and try reading that again …)
The President says that he wants to strengthen the boarders … more fencing … more patrols …. Arrest and deport those found entering the country illegally. And that would be a good start, hopefully ‘we the people’ will keep the feet of the politicians to the fire and actually get some follow-through on this issue, but it’s only half the problem.
What is the Presidents plan to handle the millions of illegals already in the country? A ‘guest worker program’ that he says is not amnesty. Okay … Technically speaking it may not be amnesty, but it’s as close as you can get without becoming it. The plan would allow any illegal holding a job in the US to continue working for up to 3 years, at which point they must leave the country.
Now … let me get this straight … they break our laws and come here illegally … and they get a job (technically breaking another law) … and their punishment is they get keep the job and stay here and we’ll come back to deport you in 3 years.
Raise your hand if you actually believe that they’ll be gone in 3 years …
No … sorry … doesn’t work. Sends the wrong message both to prospective immigrants (legal and illegal) and to employers.
No … what you need to do is be tough on the illegals and on the employers that enable them. If you are found in this country illegally you should be immediately deported back to your country of origin, if you are found guilty of a crime while in this country illegally your sentence should immediately be the maximum sentence and you should be deported once you have served out your sentence. (Of course prisons in this country are a completely different rant) If you are found employing an illegal you should face stiff fines and/or jail time … say $2.5 million per illegal and/or up to 10 years in prison (compounded for each illegal).
The idea is to make hiring an illegal so unattractive, so risky, that an employer is going to do everything possible to make sure that his employees are in this country legally. Now I’m willing to be lenient in a case where the employer is able to show due diligence in their hiring, but was taken by forged documents, but this would have to be determined on a case-by-case basis.
Now, some people will yell and scream that the immigration system is outdated, archaic, and too slow. I would probably agree with all of the above, and I would certainly agree that there needs to be some massive reform to the system, but that is no excuse for willingly and knowingly entering the country illegally or remaining in this country illegally. If I get pulled over for speeding, should I not have to pay the ticket because the county I was pulled over in doesn’t accept electronic payment and requires me to pay in person, in cash, on the appointed court day? No.
We should come down hard on those that have no respect for our country and our laws, and embrace those that show us that they respect us and wish to follow the American dream.
“In the first place we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the man's becoming in very fact an American, and nothing but an American...There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag, and this excludes the red flag, which symbolizes all wars against liberty and civilization, just as much as it excludes any foreign flag of a nation to which we are hostile...We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language...and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people.”
This was sent to me as a quote by Theodore Roosevelt, though I haven’t been able to confirm if Roosevelt actually ever said it. Who said it or didn’t say it, however, does not change the truth in the statement. Sadly the realms of political correctness erode this country and strip from it even its identity … it divides us into groups and subgroups and pits us against one another weakening us from within.
True to life, however, things passed by and in the end most of the things I had been waiting on to start writing again ended up not happening … work didn’t lighten up and the schedule change that was supposed to free up more time fell through.
None of that, however, is here nor there in turns of what I set out to write about today….
Immigration … it’s been in the news … the President gave a speech on it a couple of weekends ago. There are as many opinions out there on the issue as there are people to ask … and likely even more than that given most politician’s propensity for double talk.
First, I am pro-immigration. That is to say that I believe it would be a horrible disservice to the founding concepts of this country to adopt a closed boarder policy. I have nothing against people immigrating to this country and working hard to achieve a better life. That is one of the principles on which this country thrives.
What I don’t have any use for are those that come here illegally … yes most come here for the same reasons … to work hard and earn a better lives for themselves. But they do so without any respect for the dream that they are striving toward, because they have disrespected the legal in favor of the easy, much as a thief will break into a house to steal rather than work, save, and purchase the item for themselves.
(And if you just thought to yourself, ‘Oh, he just called all ‘undocumented workers’ thieves!’ take a 2x4 and slam it into your head a couple times and try reading that again …)
The President says that he wants to strengthen the boarders … more fencing … more patrols …. Arrest and deport those found entering the country illegally. And that would be a good start, hopefully ‘we the people’ will keep the feet of the politicians to the fire and actually get some follow-through on this issue, but it’s only half the problem.
What is the Presidents plan to handle the millions of illegals already in the country? A ‘guest worker program’ that he says is not amnesty. Okay … Technically speaking it may not be amnesty, but it’s as close as you can get without becoming it. The plan would allow any illegal holding a job in the US to continue working for up to 3 years, at which point they must leave the country.
Now … let me get this straight … they break our laws and come here illegally … and they get a job (technically breaking another law) … and their punishment is they get keep the job and stay here and we’ll come back to deport you in 3 years.
Raise your hand if you actually believe that they’ll be gone in 3 years …
No … sorry … doesn’t work. Sends the wrong message both to prospective immigrants (legal and illegal) and to employers.
No … what you need to do is be tough on the illegals and on the employers that enable them. If you are found in this country illegally you should be immediately deported back to your country of origin, if you are found guilty of a crime while in this country illegally your sentence should immediately be the maximum sentence and you should be deported once you have served out your sentence. (Of course prisons in this country are a completely different rant) If you are found employing an illegal you should face stiff fines and/or jail time … say $2.5 million per illegal and/or up to 10 years in prison (compounded for each illegal).
The idea is to make hiring an illegal so unattractive, so risky, that an employer is going to do everything possible to make sure that his employees are in this country legally. Now I’m willing to be lenient in a case where the employer is able to show due diligence in their hiring, but was taken by forged documents, but this would have to be determined on a case-by-case basis.
Now, some people will yell and scream that the immigration system is outdated, archaic, and too slow. I would probably agree with all of the above, and I would certainly agree that there needs to be some massive reform to the system, but that is no excuse for willingly and knowingly entering the country illegally or remaining in this country illegally. If I get pulled over for speeding, should I not have to pay the ticket because the county I was pulled over in doesn’t accept electronic payment and requires me to pay in person, in cash, on the appointed court day? No.
We should come down hard on those that have no respect for our country and our laws, and embrace those that show us that they respect us and wish to follow the American dream.
“In the first place we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the man's becoming in very fact an American, and nothing but an American...There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag, and this excludes the red flag, which symbolizes all wars against liberty and civilization, just as much as it excludes any foreign flag of a nation to which we are hostile...We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language...and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people.”
This was sent to me as a quote by Theodore Roosevelt, though I haven’t been able to confirm if Roosevelt actually ever said it. Who said it or didn’t say it, however, does not change the truth in the statement. Sadly the realms of political correctness erode this country and strip from it even its identity … it divides us into groups and subgroups and pits us against one another weakening us from within.
Tuesday, September 27, 2005
Gas and Economics
Some people (okay a LOT of people) have been complaining about the price of a gallon of gas. First off … the price of gas in the US is one of the lowest in the world, Europeans generally pay anywhere from $5-$10 a gallon to fill up … most of which is taxes. Second off gas prices are, in large part, dictated by the price of crude oil … this in turn is mainly controlled by OPEC as they represent the collaboration of most of the Oil Producing countries in the world.
For various reasons the price of crude oil has been rising over the last several years … this means that the refineries that we depend on for gas have to pay more for their oil … in turn having to charge more for the gas they produce meaning that the stations have to charge more to cover the expense of buying gas.
Now there are a lot of factors involved here … but part of the problem also comes in the fact that no new refineries have been built in the US in roughly 30 years. The existing refineries have been operating at max capacity for several years now … we can’t produce gas any faster even if we got more oil. Add to that the fact that there are MORE vehicles using the gas … many of which are of the low MPG rated ‘utility vehicles’ and you have a situation of increasing demand with a fixed supply whose raw materials are becoming increasingly expensive.
Now … let’s take a look at the consumer end of things since that’s where most people are complaining about things. We’ll create a fictitious gas station called the Gas-O Line …
I’m opening a new Gas-O station … and I buy 1 weeks worth of gas to get started at $1.00 a gallon (keeping the numbers simple for the purposes of calculation) … of course I have other expenses, station maintenance, electric bill, phone bill, employee salaries (and payroll taxes), rent or mortgage, insurance, etc. … I determine that I need to add $0.50 to each gallon of gas to cover these expenses and, as a business, I want to make a profit so I decide on a 10% profit margin … that would be another $0.15 so I need to charge $1.65 a gallon to cover my expenses + profit … of course the government lays another tax on the sale of that gas that I have to collect at the time of the sale … let’s say it is 10% as well (that’s another $0.165) … so now I’m charging $1.815 / gallon when I open my station.
2 days after I open something happens and my supplier raises his price to 2.00 a gallon. No problem, right? I’ve got a weeks worth of gas already right? Wrong. If I continue to sell my gas at $1.815 a gallon for the rest of the week I won’t have enough money to buy the next weeks supply when the time comes. (Remember only $1.15 of that $1.815 will be around the $0.50 is already spent on employees, etc, and the $0.165 is straight to the government.) To insure that I make enough money to keep my supply going I have to raise my prices to a minimum of $2.75 a gallon … with no profit (which if I’m not going to make any profit I may as well just close down.) … so let’s say $2.85 (less than a 5% margin) … but I’ve already sold 2 days worth so I also have to make up the difference in that gas (this would depend on numbers that we haven’t been dealing with how much sold in those two days, how much was left in the tank, etc. so for now we’ll assume that it is another $0.05 to cover it) … so $2.90 a gallon then.
Most people would accuse me of being ‘greedy’ because of this … say that ‘I’m taking advantage of things’ ... now certainly I can gamble that the price will come back down by the time I need to buy my next weeks worth of gas … but if I do that and keep my price at the $1.815 and the price doesn’t come down I will only be able to afford to fill half my tank ... and if supply prices continue to rise that gets ugly fast.
There are of course a lot of things I’m not taking into account in all this to try and keep it simple. But that is the gist of it … the electric company works in much the same way … they have to charge based not on what they paid, but on what it will cost them to keep their supply coming.
“But prices should be kept low … we need gas!”
In other words “Government should use our tax money to subsidize gas so I can afford to drive whenever I want.”
No, no, no and NO.
We need LESS government in the economy, not more. Part of the problem in general is that we don’t ‘need’ gas … driving is a luxury, a convenience, not a necessity. That we, as a society, have grown so dependent on it is a completely separate matter.
Another part of the problem is those organizations that call themselves ‘environmentalists’ … It has been environmental laws (and a bit of a NIMBY (Not in MY backyard) mentality in general) that has prevented the construction of new refineries to help keep up with the increasing demand for fuel. It is environmentalists that have so far prevented oil drilling in the section of ANWAR that was set aside for oil drilling as well as off the coast of Florida increasing our dependence on foreign oil from a very volatile international oil market – though we have to keep in mind that without more refineries to refine the crude oil, gathering more oil may have a minimal impact on the price of gas due to the fact that our refineries are already operating at max capacity, the only difference would be that we wouldn’t be buying the oil from overseas so the refinery would likely be getting it’s raw material cheaper.
Oh … and also as far as ‘need’ keeping the price of something low …. Think of it like this:
You are the only person in 1000 miles that can do ‘job A’ … 60% of the people in that 1000 miles ‘need’ job A done. Should you be forced to work for minimum wage because it is a ‘needed’ job? You’d better get some other people to learn to do the job … but what’s their incentive if they can only work for minimum wage? [Ignoring for a moment the fact that I don’t generally agree in minimum wage laws in the first place ….]
Most of you that know me and read this already know all this of course and understand that one of our greatest bastions of freedom is the Free Market system, and that the Free Market system fails to operate when the government interferes with it.
For various reasons the price of crude oil has been rising over the last several years … this means that the refineries that we depend on for gas have to pay more for their oil … in turn having to charge more for the gas they produce meaning that the stations have to charge more to cover the expense of buying gas.
Now there are a lot of factors involved here … but part of the problem also comes in the fact that no new refineries have been built in the US in roughly 30 years. The existing refineries have been operating at max capacity for several years now … we can’t produce gas any faster even if we got more oil. Add to that the fact that there are MORE vehicles using the gas … many of which are of the low MPG rated ‘utility vehicles’ and you have a situation of increasing demand with a fixed supply whose raw materials are becoming increasingly expensive.
Now … let’s take a look at the consumer end of things since that’s where most people are complaining about things. We’ll create a fictitious gas station called the Gas-O Line …
I’m opening a new Gas-O station … and I buy 1 weeks worth of gas to get started at $1.00 a gallon (keeping the numbers simple for the purposes of calculation) … of course I have other expenses, station maintenance, electric bill, phone bill, employee salaries (and payroll taxes), rent or mortgage, insurance, etc. … I determine that I need to add $0.50 to each gallon of gas to cover these expenses and, as a business, I want to make a profit so I decide on a 10% profit margin … that would be another $0.15 so I need to charge $1.65 a gallon to cover my expenses + profit … of course the government lays another tax on the sale of that gas that I have to collect at the time of the sale … let’s say it is 10% as well (that’s another $0.165) … so now I’m charging $1.815 / gallon when I open my station.
2 days after I open something happens and my supplier raises his price to 2.00 a gallon. No problem, right? I’ve got a weeks worth of gas already right? Wrong. If I continue to sell my gas at $1.815 a gallon for the rest of the week I won’t have enough money to buy the next weeks supply when the time comes. (Remember only $1.15 of that $1.815 will be around the $0.50 is already spent on employees, etc, and the $0.165 is straight to the government.) To insure that I make enough money to keep my supply going I have to raise my prices to a minimum of $2.75 a gallon … with no profit (which if I’m not going to make any profit I may as well just close down.) … so let’s say $2.85 (less than a 5% margin) … but I’ve already sold 2 days worth so I also have to make up the difference in that gas (this would depend on numbers that we haven’t been dealing with how much sold in those two days, how much was left in the tank, etc. so for now we’ll assume that it is another $0.05 to cover it) … so $2.90 a gallon then.
Most people would accuse me of being ‘greedy’ because of this … say that ‘I’m taking advantage of things’ ... now certainly I can gamble that the price will come back down by the time I need to buy my next weeks worth of gas … but if I do that and keep my price at the $1.815 and the price doesn’t come down I will only be able to afford to fill half my tank ... and if supply prices continue to rise that gets ugly fast.
There are of course a lot of things I’m not taking into account in all this to try and keep it simple. But that is the gist of it … the electric company works in much the same way … they have to charge based not on what they paid, but on what it will cost them to keep their supply coming.
“But prices should be kept low … we need gas!”
In other words “Government should use our tax money to subsidize gas so I can afford to drive whenever I want.”
No, no, no and NO.
We need LESS government in the economy, not more. Part of the problem in general is that we don’t ‘need’ gas … driving is a luxury, a convenience, not a necessity. That we, as a society, have grown so dependent on it is a completely separate matter.
Another part of the problem is those organizations that call themselves ‘environmentalists’ … It has been environmental laws (and a bit of a NIMBY (Not in MY backyard) mentality in general) that has prevented the construction of new refineries to help keep up with the increasing demand for fuel. It is environmentalists that have so far prevented oil drilling in the section of ANWAR that was set aside for oil drilling as well as off the coast of Florida increasing our dependence on foreign oil from a very volatile international oil market – though we have to keep in mind that without more refineries to refine the crude oil, gathering more oil may have a minimal impact on the price of gas due to the fact that our refineries are already operating at max capacity, the only difference would be that we wouldn’t be buying the oil from overseas so the refinery would likely be getting it’s raw material cheaper.
Oh … and also as far as ‘need’ keeping the price of something low …. Think of it like this:
You are the only person in 1000 miles that can do ‘job A’ … 60% of the people in that 1000 miles ‘need’ job A done. Should you be forced to work for minimum wage because it is a ‘needed’ job? You’d better get some other people to learn to do the job … but what’s their incentive if they can only work for minimum wage? [Ignoring for a moment the fact that I don’t generally agree in minimum wage laws in the first place ….]
Most of you that know me and read this already know all this of course and understand that one of our greatest bastions of freedom is the Free Market system, and that the Free Market system fails to operate when the government interferes with it.
Friday, September 23, 2005
Paying for the Hurricanes
I’ve seen a disgusting number of people from the President on down calling for massive federal funds to rebuild New Orleans … undoubtedly this will continue in the aftermath of the approaching Rita. But is this a proper use of federal funds? If a tree fell on my house tonight my house would be destroyed, I’d have no where to live, there’s a good chance I would have lost a good amount of the stuff I have in the house … but I wouldn’t be eligible for a single dime of Federal aid … In fact the town I live in had some Tornadoes hit as a result of the outer band of storms from Katrina … the people who suffered a loss in those storms are also not eligible to receive Federal aid…
This is exactly why the Federal Government is not supposed to get into the business of charity. There is no way for it to do so in a fair and even manner. It simply can’t afford it. People are calling for the survivors of Katrina to be given a monetary sum from the government to pay for the loss of their loved ones as was done for the survivors of the 9/11 attacks in 2001. Putting aside the fact that I didn’t agree with the payments to the victims families of 9/11 … putting aside the fact that no one called for such for the hurricanes that hit Florida last year … people are suggesting that people who died, largely to their own stupidity, to a storm that they were warned about and ordered to evacuate from DAYS in advance are in the category of people who died in a surprise attack that they couldn’t have escaped from.
Don’t get me wrong … I want to see the people of New Orleans helped … I want to see the people of Mississippi and Alabama that suffered from the hurricane helped ... I want to see those that suffer loss from Hurricane Rita helped as well. But that is why we have the American Red Cross and other, private, charities … it shouldn’t be the government’s responsibility.
The idea is that the federal government should have an insignificant impact in our lives … it should not come bailing us out of our problems. The contribution of the federal government to disaster clean up should be the deployment of federal troops and equipment IF REQUESTED, nothing more … they certainly shouldn’t be writing checks to people.
As it stands a large number of people in the hurricane stricken areas of the gulf coast will be helped twice … by the government and private charities. Other people in the United States will experience loss for various other reasons (house fire, tornado, etc) that don’t classify as a ‘natural disaster’ and many of those will be lucky if they receive help from the private charities. How is this fair and impartial? Did someone that looses everything in a fire in Nebraska somehow loose less than someone that lost everything to Hurricane Katrina? Both may also have lost loved ones in the disaster … both homes are destroyed … both have lost their belongings. But there is a difference here … the ones that lost their homes in a hurricane knew it was coming unless they had their heads stuck in the sand ….
But gone are the days when the Congress or the President will deny aid to a natural disaster victim … we live in the days when both the Congress and the President will happily spend the American Taxpayer’s money on ‘aid’ in order to look compassionate and buy votes. Any politician that tries to stand against what is, in essence, a misuse of Federal funds would loose any political future that they had … they would be called ‘heartless’, ‘callus’, ‘racist’ or even worse ‘rich’, and they would have the political life expectancy of a snowball in hell.
And that’s the hole that we have allowed to be dug … to change things at this point a majority of Congress would have to commit political suicide … while this might, in the short term, fix the problem it would almost certainly guarantee that the opposition would take power in the next election with the potential result of not only undoing that short term fix, but also lead to further power being controlled under the banner of the Federal government and away from the people who were supposed to wield it … We The People. What this essentially means is that the only way it is going to happen is if ‘We The People’ get out of our comfortable chairs and make it happen….
This is exactly why the Federal Government is not supposed to get into the business of charity. There is no way for it to do so in a fair and even manner. It simply can’t afford it. People are calling for the survivors of Katrina to be given a monetary sum from the government to pay for the loss of their loved ones as was done for the survivors of the 9/11 attacks in 2001. Putting aside the fact that I didn’t agree with the payments to the victims families of 9/11 … putting aside the fact that no one called for such for the hurricanes that hit Florida last year … people are suggesting that people who died, largely to their own stupidity, to a storm that they were warned about and ordered to evacuate from DAYS in advance are in the category of people who died in a surprise attack that they couldn’t have escaped from.
Don’t get me wrong … I want to see the people of New Orleans helped … I want to see the people of Mississippi and Alabama that suffered from the hurricane helped ... I want to see those that suffer loss from Hurricane Rita helped as well. But that is why we have the American Red Cross and other, private, charities … it shouldn’t be the government’s responsibility.
The idea is that the federal government should have an insignificant impact in our lives … it should not come bailing us out of our problems. The contribution of the federal government to disaster clean up should be the deployment of federal troops and equipment IF REQUESTED, nothing more … they certainly shouldn’t be writing checks to people.
As it stands a large number of people in the hurricane stricken areas of the gulf coast will be helped twice … by the government and private charities. Other people in the United States will experience loss for various other reasons (house fire, tornado, etc) that don’t classify as a ‘natural disaster’ and many of those will be lucky if they receive help from the private charities. How is this fair and impartial? Did someone that looses everything in a fire in Nebraska somehow loose less than someone that lost everything to Hurricane Katrina? Both may also have lost loved ones in the disaster … both homes are destroyed … both have lost their belongings. But there is a difference here … the ones that lost their homes in a hurricane knew it was coming unless they had their heads stuck in the sand ….
But gone are the days when the Congress or the President will deny aid to a natural disaster victim … we live in the days when both the Congress and the President will happily spend the American Taxpayer’s money on ‘aid’ in order to look compassionate and buy votes. Any politician that tries to stand against what is, in essence, a misuse of Federal funds would loose any political future that they had … they would be called ‘heartless’, ‘callus’, ‘racist’ or even worse ‘rich’, and they would have the political life expectancy of a snowball in hell.
And that’s the hole that we have allowed to be dug … to change things at this point a majority of Congress would have to commit political suicide … while this might, in the short term, fix the problem it would almost certainly guarantee that the opposition would take power in the next election with the potential result of not only undoing that short term fix, but also lead to further power being controlled under the banner of the Federal government and away from the people who were supposed to wield it … We The People. What this essentially means is that the only way it is going to happen is if ‘We The People’ get out of our comfortable chairs and make it happen….
Monday, September 12, 2005
State Rights
In the wake of Hurricane Katrina many people are questioning the ‘sluggish’ response of the federal aid. As I believe I’ve mentioned once already, this was partially the result of the Louisiana Governor declining the initial offer of federal assistance shortly after the hurricane struck. There were other factors, communication issues, coordination problems between state and local officials that compounded when federal assistance did get the okay to provide aid. While some of these probably were problems with the federal response, many were fundamental problems at the state and local levels.
All of this has led to people questioning why Bush didn’t force the issue and step in, and the reports are that he considered it. With the issuing of an Executive Order, he could technically have moved in and secured Louisiana with federal troops, why didn’t he? State Rights. State Rights have been dying a slow and painful death for decades at the least, but had “W” taken that step it would have essentially put the final nail in the coffin and placed us all directly under the bloated power of the federal government.
He would have set the precedent that the President could, at any time, use Federal Military Forces to seize control of any State in the Union. There is a reason that this is not meant to happen … and it is in essence the same reason that the President couldn’t send troops over to secure Spain after the train bombs last year … he would be grossly overstepping his jurisdiction. This is the type of thing that ignited the war between the states in the first place … the right of the state to govern itself.
People have forgotten the idea that this country was originally organized around … local control by the people. The idea was that most of the ‘government’ that affected our lives was to come from the most local level so that ‘we the people’ could control it. City governments were responsible for handling disputes and enforcing the law of the local area … state governments were to manage those disputes that arose between towns … the role of the federal government was to look to the protection of the states and manage disputes between the states to allow fair and equal treatment based on the constitution. The states were, in essence, small countries with the federal government mediating between them and maintaining the forces necessary to protect the whole.
Now we have President Bush saying Congress should consider whether the federal government should have more authority to step into disaster areas without a request from the states. The answer should be ‘no’ … we don’t need to give the federal government any more authority than it already has, and I would say that we actually need to take some of the authority that it has now, and return it to the States where it more appropriately matches the original ideas on which this country was established.
We as a country need to stop looking to the federal government to ‘bail’ us out … it is not their job. Why does a state need to build a state highway that has to be financed 75-100% by the federal government and has to be maintained primarily through federal funds? The idea is supposed to be that those funds should come from the local level … where the people providing the money can keep a closer idea on where their money is going. What money can’t be gained by the state should come from private investment not money taken by the federal government from people on the other side of the continent. But politicians learned a long time ago that things are so much easier to handle when they are out of sight of the people funding them … it is much easier to get funding for ‘pork’ projects when the money is collected by the federal government and then distributed to the states …
The system also makes it easier to hide ‘pork’ problems at the local level … ‘local’ tax money can be collected and spent reasonably on ‘proper’ projects while federal money can be used for the ‘pork’ projects because the locals won’t look at those numbers as closely … after all … that’s not THEIR money … that’s federal money.
No … the federal government doesn’t need more authority to step in without request from the state … the states need more authority to handle disaster situations. Of course that would mean that the blame for the failures to plan, to use the money and resources properly, for maintaining law and order, and all of the other duties of the state would fall on the state and local government….
All of this has led to people questioning why Bush didn’t force the issue and step in, and the reports are that he considered it. With the issuing of an Executive Order, he could technically have moved in and secured Louisiana with federal troops, why didn’t he? State Rights. State Rights have been dying a slow and painful death for decades at the least, but had “W” taken that step it would have essentially put the final nail in the coffin and placed us all directly under the bloated power of the federal government.
He would have set the precedent that the President could, at any time, use Federal Military Forces to seize control of any State in the Union. There is a reason that this is not meant to happen … and it is in essence the same reason that the President couldn’t send troops over to secure Spain after the train bombs last year … he would be grossly overstepping his jurisdiction. This is the type of thing that ignited the war between the states in the first place … the right of the state to govern itself.
People have forgotten the idea that this country was originally organized around … local control by the people. The idea was that most of the ‘government’ that affected our lives was to come from the most local level so that ‘we the people’ could control it. City governments were responsible for handling disputes and enforcing the law of the local area … state governments were to manage those disputes that arose between towns … the role of the federal government was to look to the protection of the states and manage disputes between the states to allow fair and equal treatment based on the constitution. The states were, in essence, small countries with the federal government mediating between them and maintaining the forces necessary to protect the whole.
Now we have President Bush saying Congress should consider whether the federal government should have more authority to step into disaster areas without a request from the states. The answer should be ‘no’ … we don’t need to give the federal government any more authority than it already has, and I would say that we actually need to take some of the authority that it has now, and return it to the States where it more appropriately matches the original ideas on which this country was established.
We as a country need to stop looking to the federal government to ‘bail’ us out … it is not their job. Why does a state need to build a state highway that has to be financed 75-100% by the federal government and has to be maintained primarily through federal funds? The idea is supposed to be that those funds should come from the local level … where the people providing the money can keep a closer idea on where their money is going. What money can’t be gained by the state should come from private investment not money taken by the federal government from people on the other side of the continent. But politicians learned a long time ago that things are so much easier to handle when they are out of sight of the people funding them … it is much easier to get funding for ‘pork’ projects when the money is collected by the federal government and then distributed to the states …
The system also makes it easier to hide ‘pork’ problems at the local level … ‘local’ tax money can be collected and spent reasonably on ‘proper’ projects while federal money can be used for the ‘pork’ projects because the locals won’t look at those numbers as closely … after all … that’s not THEIR money … that’s federal money.
No … the federal government doesn’t need more authority to step in without request from the state … the states need more authority to handle disaster situations. Of course that would mean that the blame for the failures to plan, to use the money and resources properly, for maintaining law and order, and all of the other duties of the state would fall on the state and local government….
Friday, September 09, 2005
Katrina and the Race Card
I get really tired to hearing that <insert issue of the day> is caused by racism, or that people who believe that law and order should mean something are racists, or that only racists support welfare reform (or tax reform, or immigration reform, or virtually any type of reform known to man).
It is, in essence, minority leaders (or those pandering to minorities) saying ‘I can’t actually debate with facts so I’m just going to call anyone that disagrees with me a racist.”
Take looting in New Orleans as an example …. There have been reports of people, even some political figures that have compared people who expressed opposition to looting as, in the words of one blogger, ‘racist f---s’.
I’m sorry … but there is nothing that you NEED in a jewelry or electronics store. I can distinguish and allow the ‘looting’ of grocery and convenience stores for food and/or water in a situation such as this, heck a lot of the food in those places will spoil and have to be thrown out anyway ... at least this way SOMEONE gets some use out of it, but that plasma TV isn’t needed for your survival. Of course had residents been properly prepared then they wouldn’t need to loot even for the necessities of survival …. But that’s an argument for a different rant.
One person tried to justify the ‘looting’ of televisions by saying that they would use those televisions to ‘barter for the necessities’. I’m sorry … but what’s wrong with using cash, or items that *gasp* actually belong to you.
I’m sorry, I don’t care if you’re Black, White, Hispanic, Oriental, Martian, or Green with Purple Poka dots, stealing is stealing, and while I can forgive theft for the necessities of life given the extra ordinary conditions … taking advantage of those conditions to steal the property of others for personal gain is not forgivable. It’s not a ‘race’ issue … are most of the looters in New Orleans black? Well, given that most of the citizens of New Orleans are black (to something like a 7:1 ratio) then odds are pretty good that, yes, most of them are. Chances are pretty good that they are poor too … and that doesn’t matter either.
Odds are that … regardless of race … the people that start looting in these situations are the same people that take the ‘easy way’ out of life, preferring to live off government hand outs than to actually work for anything. Denied those hand outs they seek to take what they want directly (notice the use of "want" as opposed to "need"). At best they are lazy good for nothings, at worst they are social predators to whom stealing is already quite familiar.
Others want to blame the slow response of federal agencies on ‘racism’ … saying, as Georgia Democratic Congressman David Scott suggested, that ‘Washington would have moved more swiftly if the faces on rooftops had been white.’
Of course now we are finding out that the delay in federal support came because the Louisiana Governor declined the initial offer of aid, requesting time to assess the situation. The same also seems to be true with the Red Cross response … National Guard Troops and Red Cross were ready to go as soon as the hurricane was over … but were delayed by the state government.
Federal support can be offered, but unless it is accepted there’s nothing that they can do. Red Cross can technically go in on their own, but in a situation like that, if martial law is in effect they can find themselves on the wrong side of a bad situation. No … the slow response wasn’t racism … unless it’s the Governor of the state that you’re accusing of being racist.
Just because something bad happens to a member of a minority group … or a member of a minority group finds themselves in a situation that causes people to disapprove of their actions … doesn’t automatically make them a victim of racism. If a person that happens to be a minority gets fired from a job by a boss who is white because they weren’t DOING their job, that doesn’t make it racism, but there are those that will be jumping up and down shouting racist and pointing their fingers at the boss if it gets televised on the news.
We really need to take the ‘racism’ card out of the deck … with as often as it is used today the only thing that is happening is that true examples of racism are more likely to go unnoticed …. Much like the boy who cried wolf was ignored when the wolf actually showed up….
It is, in essence, minority leaders (or those pandering to minorities) saying ‘I can’t actually debate with facts so I’m just going to call anyone that disagrees with me a racist.”
Take looting in New Orleans as an example …. There have been reports of people, even some political figures that have compared people who expressed opposition to looting as, in the words of one blogger, ‘racist f---s’.
I’m sorry … but there is nothing that you NEED in a jewelry or electronics store. I can distinguish and allow the ‘looting’ of grocery and convenience stores for food and/or water in a situation such as this, heck a lot of the food in those places will spoil and have to be thrown out anyway ... at least this way SOMEONE gets some use out of it, but that plasma TV isn’t needed for your survival. Of course had residents been properly prepared then they wouldn’t need to loot even for the necessities of survival …. But that’s an argument for a different rant.
One person tried to justify the ‘looting’ of televisions by saying that they would use those televisions to ‘barter for the necessities’. I’m sorry … but what’s wrong with using cash, or items that *gasp* actually belong to you.
I’m sorry, I don’t care if you’re Black, White, Hispanic, Oriental, Martian, or Green with Purple Poka dots, stealing is stealing, and while I can forgive theft for the necessities of life given the extra ordinary conditions … taking advantage of those conditions to steal the property of others for personal gain is not forgivable. It’s not a ‘race’ issue … are most of the looters in New Orleans black? Well, given that most of the citizens of New Orleans are black (to something like a 7:1 ratio) then odds are pretty good that, yes, most of them are. Chances are pretty good that they are poor too … and that doesn’t matter either.
Odds are that … regardless of race … the people that start looting in these situations are the same people that take the ‘easy way’ out of life, preferring to live off government hand outs than to actually work for anything. Denied those hand outs they seek to take what they want directly (notice the use of "want" as opposed to "need"). At best they are lazy good for nothings, at worst they are social predators to whom stealing is already quite familiar.
Others want to blame the slow response of federal agencies on ‘racism’ … saying, as Georgia Democratic Congressman David Scott suggested, that ‘Washington would have moved more swiftly if the faces on rooftops had been white.’
Of course now we are finding out that the delay in federal support came because the Louisiana Governor declined the initial offer of aid, requesting time to assess the situation. The same also seems to be true with the Red Cross response … National Guard Troops and Red Cross were ready to go as soon as the hurricane was over … but were delayed by the state government.
Federal support can be offered, but unless it is accepted there’s nothing that they can do. Red Cross can technically go in on their own, but in a situation like that, if martial law is in effect they can find themselves on the wrong side of a bad situation. No … the slow response wasn’t racism … unless it’s the Governor of the state that you’re accusing of being racist.
Just because something bad happens to a member of a minority group … or a member of a minority group finds themselves in a situation that causes people to disapprove of their actions … doesn’t automatically make them a victim of racism. If a person that happens to be a minority gets fired from a job by a boss who is white because they weren’t DOING their job, that doesn’t make it racism, but there are those that will be jumping up and down shouting racist and pointing their fingers at the boss if it gets televised on the news.
We really need to take the ‘racism’ card out of the deck … with as often as it is used today the only thing that is happening is that true examples of racism are more likely to go unnoticed …. Much like the boy who cried wolf was ignored when the wolf actually showed up….
Wednesday, September 07, 2005
People in Need
This isn’t specifically about Hurricane Katrina, rather it’s about people in general, but it can certainly apply to the people affected by the hurricane. I’m not just talking about donations because while those people whose lives have been torn apart by the hurricane can certainly be helped by those and are definitely in need. I am also not specifically talking about beggars, panhandlers, or people on welfare that may or may not truly be in need.
I’m talking about normal people who find themselves, for whatever reason, in a situation that they could use some help. Car broken down on the side of the road, or find that they left their lights on and their car battery is dead, or they locked their keys in the car for examples. Minor things that could happen to anyone and, I dare say, eventually happen to everyone.
Now I would like to think that people have enough respect for one another to lend a helping hand to someone in need when they’re able to. I would like to think that people would provide that help to another person regardless of who the person in need was. I would like to think all that … but too often I see that just isn’t the case.
Certainly I understand that people aren’t always able to help, but I’ve personally encountered people that aren’t unable … they are unwilling to help … or were unwilling to help me at least. And today, as I’m reading Neal’s Nuze (http://boortz.com) I see “Yesterday I told you of one man who wrote that he was driving down an expressway and saw a car broken down on the side. There was a woman holding a small child standing outside the car. He pulled over to help, but when he saw the "W" sticker on the woman's car he drove off. He just couldn't bring himself to help anyone who supported George Bush.”
Now I believe he was referring to something that he had read off of http://www.democraticunderground.com/ and frankly, well, I can’t say I’ve exactly had a stellar opinion of the posters at that particular site, so I can’t say that I’m that surprised.
A lot of people wouldn’t have a problem with this stance … and maybe I’m just weird … but to me, there’s no difference between a person that would do this and a person that would drive off because he suddenly noticed that the woman was black, or saw a Star of David on her back window. This is a person who is willing to discriminate against another human being because she’s different than him. He believes that he is better than her because of her political choice … he believes that she doesn’t deserve his help. I bet he felt that he ‘taught her a lesson’ too … if he had a Kerry bumper sticker the ‘lesson’ that he probably taught her was that Kerry supporters were jerks …. Though there’s a good shot she already knew that….
I hope that he has a wife and young child, and that they break down on the side of the road, and the person that stops and helps them has a big “W” on their front bumper … proudly displayed. Of course they might be too proud to take assistance from a lowly ‘Bush supporter’ ….
People really need to realize that we’re all humans and we’re all different we should welcome that difference because life would be really boring if we were all the same.
Well … I’ve rambled enough for the day … hopefully there was a point in all that somewhere…..
I’m talking about normal people who find themselves, for whatever reason, in a situation that they could use some help. Car broken down on the side of the road, or find that they left their lights on and their car battery is dead, or they locked their keys in the car for examples. Minor things that could happen to anyone and, I dare say, eventually happen to everyone.
Now I would like to think that people have enough respect for one another to lend a helping hand to someone in need when they’re able to. I would like to think that people would provide that help to another person regardless of who the person in need was. I would like to think all that … but too often I see that just isn’t the case.
Certainly I understand that people aren’t always able to help, but I’ve personally encountered people that aren’t unable … they are unwilling to help … or were unwilling to help me at least. And today, as I’m reading Neal’s Nuze (http://boortz.com) I see “Yesterday I told you of one man who wrote that he was driving down an expressway and saw a car broken down on the side. There was a woman holding a small child standing outside the car. He pulled over to help, but when he saw the "W" sticker on the woman's car he drove off. He just couldn't bring himself to help anyone who supported George Bush.”
Now I believe he was referring to something that he had read off of http://www.democraticunderground.com/ and frankly, well, I can’t say I’ve exactly had a stellar opinion of the posters at that particular site, so I can’t say that I’m that surprised.
A lot of people wouldn’t have a problem with this stance … and maybe I’m just weird … but to me, there’s no difference between a person that would do this and a person that would drive off because he suddenly noticed that the woman was black, or saw a Star of David on her back window. This is a person who is willing to discriminate against another human being because she’s different than him. He believes that he is better than her because of her political choice … he believes that she doesn’t deserve his help. I bet he felt that he ‘taught her a lesson’ too … if he had a Kerry bumper sticker the ‘lesson’ that he probably taught her was that Kerry supporters were jerks …. Though there’s a good shot she already knew that….
I hope that he has a wife and young child, and that they break down on the side of the road, and the person that stops and helps them has a big “W” on their front bumper … proudly displayed. Of course they might be too proud to take assistance from a lowly ‘Bush supporter’ ….
People really need to realize that we’re all humans and we’re all different we should welcome that difference because life would be really boring if we were all the same.
Well … I’ve rambled enough for the day … hopefully there was a point in all that somewhere…..
Thursday, September 01, 2005
Hurricanes and Greedy Americans
I’m sure that you’ve all heard about Hurricane Katrina by now … heard of the devastation that it caused and the after effects that still continue to cause problems. Many of you also know that I went through Hurricane Andrew in South Miami in 1992, so I am acutely aware of the damage that a Hurricane can cause in an area and the needs that the people in such areas have.
I’m not here to give you news of the hurricane or it’s aftermath … there are plenty of news sources for that, and I’m not going to beg you for donations to help the relief effort or seek sympathy for the survivors or those that lost family members or lay blame for the hurricane.
I am here to talk about that whole ‘blame game’ though … as if anyone is to blame for a hurricane. I’ve heard various accusations in the wake of Katrina … that the hurricane hit because we have so many of our troops in Iraq that they weren’t here to do something about it (just what they were supposed to do I have no idea) … that it was the judgment of Allah (who didn’t see THAT one coming) … That it was George W. Bush’s fault (though I couldn’t figure out why specifically … I suppose it probably goes back to the war though) …. I thought I saw a suggestion that it was because we were drilling in ANWAR (except we aren’t … though we should be) … oh and it’s the fault of the Governor of Mississippi for not supporting the Kyoto treaty … and the fault of ‘greedy Americans’ and their SUVs.
Personally I blame John Kerry … if he had been a better Presidential Candidate he would have been elected and doesn’t everyone just KNOW that he’d have built a wall around the country to protect us from such terrible natural disasters? I also blame Germany and France for not supporting the war in Iraq … if we’d had more support from them more of our troops might have been here (though I still don’t know what they were supposed to have done to stop the hurricane) … I also blame the California Environmentalists since it was their environmental laws that caused the devastating fires in California a few years ago, and we’ve had more frequent and stronger hurricanes since those fires….
Does everyone see how completely stupid all that is? I can assign blame to whomever I want too, it doesn’t make me right or them at fault. All it does is make me one of ‘them’ … one of those people that tries to blame all the bad things that happen on the people I disagree with. One of those people that tries to politicize this natural disaster to try and gain support for my views.
I’m not here to give you news of the hurricane or it’s aftermath … there are plenty of news sources for that, and I’m not going to beg you for donations to help the relief effort or seek sympathy for the survivors or those that lost family members or lay blame for the hurricane.
I am here to talk about that whole ‘blame game’ though … as if anyone is to blame for a hurricane. I’ve heard various accusations in the wake of Katrina … that the hurricane hit because we have so many of our troops in Iraq that they weren’t here to do something about it (just what they were supposed to do I have no idea) … that it was the judgment of Allah (who didn’t see THAT one coming) … That it was George W. Bush’s fault (though I couldn’t figure out why specifically … I suppose it probably goes back to the war though) …. I thought I saw a suggestion that it was because we were drilling in ANWAR (except we aren’t … though we should be) … oh and it’s the fault of the Governor of Mississippi for not supporting the Kyoto treaty … and the fault of ‘greedy Americans’ and their SUVs.
Personally I blame John Kerry … if he had been a better Presidential Candidate he would have been elected and doesn’t everyone just KNOW that he’d have built a wall around the country to protect us from such terrible natural disasters? I also blame Germany and France for not supporting the war in Iraq … if we’d had more support from them more of our troops might have been here (though I still don’t know what they were supposed to have done to stop the hurricane) … I also blame the California Environmentalists since it was their environmental laws that caused the devastating fires in California a few years ago, and we’ve had more frequent and stronger hurricanes since those fires….
Does everyone see how completely stupid all that is? I can assign blame to whomever I want too, it doesn’t make me right or them at fault. All it does is make me one of ‘them’ … one of those people that tries to blame all the bad things that happen on the people I disagree with. One of those people that tries to politicize this natural disaster to try and gain support for my views.
Wednesday, August 10, 2005
Bring them home!
I keep hearing this in reference to our men and women of the armed forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, and certainly I want them all to come home safely … with their mission accomplished.
History, however, tells those that care to listen that these things are never easy … they take time, and lots of it … not a couple of years. In this age of computers and instant gratification it seems that it is hard for people to come to grips with the fact that there are things that still take time.
The situation in Iraq in particular is one that we should have known going in was going to last, in all likelihood, a decade or so … in fact I believe something along those lines being mentioned back at the start of the war with Iraq but I can’t find a specific quote so that I can properly cite a source, and time.
“Well we certainly got out of ‘Nam fast enough” … yeah … and that is widely regarded as having been a ‘bad move’ on our part. Even aside from what happened in Vietnam as a result of our withdrawal the effect on the troops who were brought home in defeat … not to the enemy but to their own countrymen … was terrible. Placing that aside, however, ‘Nam was a different story … while it was a guerrilla war we were not there occupying Vietnam and establishing a new ruling body as we are with Iraq.
And make no mistake … that was our goal in Iraq … to remove a ruling body that was hostile toward the United States and our allies. To remove a leader who had openly stated hostility toward the US, had attacked neighboring countries, had used weapons of mass destruction (if he had them or not at the time of the invasion is the discussion of another rant … he HAD used them previously on Iran AND on his own people) and was known to have ties to terrorist organizations including Al-Qaeda (there was evidence of this before the war, and more evidence has been handed over by the provisional government).
You can’t walk in, remove a leader, and walk out … or else you are just leaving the door open to the possibility of the situation getting worse instead of better. If you are going to remove the leadership of a country you have to be prepared to either take over the country as part of your government or establish a new government … the Bush administration and advisors understood this and laid plans, even before the war, to help the Iraqi people establish a new … free … government.
So … how should we have known it would take time and that there would be problems? When was the last real, post war, occupation of a country by the US Military? Post WWII … Germany specifically. Can you tell me how long we occupied Germany after WWII? How long did we have a military government in that country to keep the peace?
The occupation lasted from roughly 1944-1955 … “with the Army as the executive agency for military government until 1949, and the Army continued to provide the occupation force until 1955” (Army Historical Series: The US Army in the Occupation of Germany) and it wasn’t a ‘smooth occupation’ either with Time Magazine publishing an article titled “Americans are loosing the Victory in Europe” in their Jan. 7, 1946 issue. (Life: Jan 7, 1946) and a guerrilla war against the Werewolves, a group of NAZI SS troops that fought actively into 1947 and some believe into 1949-50 primarily out of the Black Forest and Harz mountains regions.
James Rolleston of Duke University wrote this of post-war Germany, “… In such total flux no regulation could be immutable and no preconceived plan ... could be acted on. All was improvisation ….” (Excepted from a Talking Proud article which also enumerates several points of similarity between the occupation of Germany after WWII and the current occupation of Iraq) and I believe that the same quote could equally be applied to post-war Iraq, though I believe that we are at a better point in our occupation of Iraq now, than the Army was in their Occupation of Germany in the same time frame, which I believe can be attributed to learning from the mistakes of the German occupation.
We’re making progress, but it isn’t going to be over this year … or next. If we pull our troops out and make Iraq ‘stand or fall on their own’ we’re running a grave risk … at best they stand on their own but likely have some bitter feelings of abandonment toward the US … at worst they fall and the region destabilizes further complicating our problem with terrorism. I don’t believe that is a gamble we can take … I hate that our men and women are dying over there … but they are dying to make things better … for us and for the people of Iraq … and those of us back home, who are relatively safe and secure due to their efforts, need to sit back and let them do their jobs … let them finish the mission before them and come home in victory.
History, however, tells those that care to listen that these things are never easy … they take time, and lots of it … not a couple of years. In this age of computers and instant gratification it seems that it is hard for people to come to grips with the fact that there are things that still take time.
The situation in Iraq in particular is one that we should have known going in was going to last, in all likelihood, a decade or so … in fact I believe something along those lines being mentioned back at the start of the war with Iraq but I can’t find a specific quote so that I can properly cite a source, and time.
“Well we certainly got out of ‘Nam fast enough” … yeah … and that is widely regarded as having been a ‘bad move’ on our part. Even aside from what happened in Vietnam as a result of our withdrawal the effect on the troops who were brought home in defeat … not to the enemy but to their own countrymen … was terrible. Placing that aside, however, ‘Nam was a different story … while it was a guerrilla war we were not there occupying Vietnam and establishing a new ruling body as we are with Iraq.
And make no mistake … that was our goal in Iraq … to remove a ruling body that was hostile toward the United States and our allies. To remove a leader who had openly stated hostility toward the US, had attacked neighboring countries, had used weapons of mass destruction (if he had them or not at the time of the invasion is the discussion of another rant … he HAD used them previously on Iran AND on his own people) and was known to have ties to terrorist organizations including Al-Qaeda (there was evidence of this before the war, and more evidence has been handed over by the provisional government).
You can’t walk in, remove a leader, and walk out … or else you are just leaving the door open to the possibility of the situation getting worse instead of better. If you are going to remove the leadership of a country you have to be prepared to either take over the country as part of your government or establish a new government … the Bush administration and advisors understood this and laid plans, even before the war, to help the Iraqi people establish a new … free … government.
So … how should we have known it would take time and that there would be problems? When was the last real, post war, occupation of a country by the US Military? Post WWII … Germany specifically. Can you tell me how long we occupied Germany after WWII? How long did we have a military government in that country to keep the peace?
The occupation lasted from roughly 1944-1955 … “with the Army as the executive agency for military government until 1949, and the Army continued to provide the occupation force until 1955” (Army Historical Series: The US Army in the Occupation of Germany) and it wasn’t a ‘smooth occupation’ either with Time Magazine publishing an article titled “Americans are loosing the Victory in Europe” in their Jan. 7, 1946 issue. (Life: Jan 7, 1946) and a guerrilla war against the Werewolves, a group of NAZI SS troops that fought actively into 1947 and some believe into 1949-50 primarily out of the Black Forest and Harz mountains regions.
James Rolleston of Duke University wrote this of post-war Germany, “… In such total flux no regulation could be immutable and no preconceived plan ... could be acted on. All was improvisation ….” (Excepted from a Talking Proud article which also enumerates several points of similarity between the occupation of Germany after WWII and the current occupation of Iraq) and I believe that the same quote could equally be applied to post-war Iraq, though I believe that we are at a better point in our occupation of Iraq now, than the Army was in their Occupation of Germany in the same time frame, which I believe can be attributed to learning from the mistakes of the German occupation.
We’re making progress, but it isn’t going to be over this year … or next. If we pull our troops out and make Iraq ‘stand or fall on their own’ we’re running a grave risk … at best they stand on their own but likely have some bitter feelings of abandonment toward the US … at worst they fall and the region destabilizes further complicating our problem with terrorism. I don’t believe that is a gamble we can take … I hate that our men and women are dying over there … but they are dying to make things better … for us and for the people of Iraq … and those of us back home, who are relatively safe and secure due to their efforts, need to sit back and let them do their jobs … let them finish the mission before them and come home in victory.
Tuesday, August 09, 2005
The fear of a photo
No, I’m not referring to my wife’s dislike for having her picture taken. I am referring to the abhorrence of some groups of people (predominately black Americans) to having to show a photo ID to vote. Why? What’s the problem with proving who you are and that you can, legitimately, vote on the current ballet? What is wrong with this concept … why is it that some people dislike the idea so much?
One of the common statements I hear about this is ‘we’ll loose our right to vote’ … What? Are you a legal citizen of the United States, and have you registered to vote? If the answer is ‘yes’ then you have nothing to worry about step up, show your ID, and vote. IF you are not a legal citizen on the United States OR you have not registered to vote … (or you are legally dead, etc) then buh-bye, you have no right to vote anyway.
‘You should just be able to show that you live in the area … with a utility bill or something.’ … yeah … that will work … lets use utility bills as ID … I get, what … a power bill, phone bill, and water bill at the minimum … that’s 3 bills … should I be able to give the other two bills to someone off the street and say … here, go vote? Not to mention the fact that you don’t have to be a citizen to get your utilities hooked up, you DO, however, have to be a citizen to vote legally.
Keeping in mind that a ‘photo ID’ in itself doesn’t prove citizenship …
‘They’re taking away the anonymous ballot!’ … um … no … unless they are attaching your ID or putting your name/SSN on the ballet somewhere then showing your ID to a poll worker so that they can check your name against a list of registered voters does not take away the ‘anonymous’ portion of the ballot. Yes, they know you voted, but they have no way of knowing which ballet you cast or (as a result) who/what you voted for. There is no intention to start tracking peoples individual voting habits.
Part of the idea behind this is so that poll workers can make sure that ‘you’ only vote once. The ultimate goal is to lessen (or more hopefully eliminate) voter fraud. To stop non-citizens from voting, to stop people voting multiple times, etc. And I have to conclude that the organizations that are fighting against policies that would reduce voter fraud must have the most to loose from the elimination of voter fraud due to participation in it. The individuals … most are sheep … doing what the organizations tell them to do ‘in their best interests’, some are leaders using paranoia and misinformation in order to achieve their goals, knowing that the majority of those listening to them won’t think or question what they say.
Personally I think that it’s too easy to vote even with showing a picture ID. I have always felt that there should be more requirements to voting. Citizenship is one thing, but as the masses are generally woefully under informed I feel that there needs to be something more … a minimum awareness of the importance and responsibility of voting … required to be a registered voter. (NOTE – I’m not saying that the ‘masses’ are too dumb to vote … I don’t believe that … I simply believe that the vast majority of the masses make no effort to be informed of important issues. If those same ‘masses’ were to put forth the effort to be informed I believe that, for the most part, they would have the intelligence needed to make a good decision (even if it was one I disagreed with.)) At the very minimum I believe that a regular civics exam should be required to keep voter registration current … if you can’t answer certain questions about how our government operates then, in my opinion, you have no business voting anyway.
I have said it before, but I feel that it bears repeating – the ‘right’ to vote is a power, and like all power it brings with it responsibility. Specifically the responsibility to be aware and informed about the issues … to know what is going on so that you can use your power in an informed manner to help steer things in the direction that you, as an informed citizen, believe is the best.
The system works so long as those voting are aware of the issues and the various solutions that might be presented. Even in a Presidential Election you aren’t voting for an individual … you are voting for a vision of the future … a set of solutions to the problems facing the nation. If you aren’t aware of the problems facing the nation, or the difference in the visions presented, how can you pick which one is the best for the country? And, as someone who works on them, let me tell you that choosing based on political commercials is one of the worst things you can do … and yet probably a good percentage of voters in any election will do just that … or worse yet, will vote for someone just because of the political party that they are affiliated with.
One of the common statements I hear about this is ‘we’ll loose our right to vote’ … What? Are you a legal citizen of the United States, and have you registered to vote? If the answer is ‘yes’ then you have nothing to worry about step up, show your ID, and vote. IF you are not a legal citizen on the United States OR you have not registered to vote … (or you are legally dead, etc) then buh-bye, you have no right to vote anyway.
‘You should just be able to show that you live in the area … with a utility bill or something.’ … yeah … that will work … lets use utility bills as ID … I get, what … a power bill, phone bill, and water bill at the minimum … that’s 3 bills … should I be able to give the other two bills to someone off the street and say … here, go vote? Not to mention the fact that you don’t have to be a citizen to get your utilities hooked up, you DO, however, have to be a citizen to vote legally.
Keeping in mind that a ‘photo ID’ in itself doesn’t prove citizenship …
‘They’re taking away the anonymous ballot!’ … um … no … unless they are attaching your ID or putting your name/SSN on the ballet somewhere then showing your ID to a poll worker so that they can check your name against a list of registered voters does not take away the ‘anonymous’ portion of the ballot. Yes, they know you voted, but they have no way of knowing which ballet you cast or (as a result) who/what you voted for. There is no intention to start tracking peoples individual voting habits.
Part of the idea behind this is so that poll workers can make sure that ‘you’ only vote once. The ultimate goal is to lessen (or more hopefully eliminate) voter fraud. To stop non-citizens from voting, to stop people voting multiple times, etc. And I have to conclude that the organizations that are fighting against policies that would reduce voter fraud must have the most to loose from the elimination of voter fraud due to participation in it. The individuals … most are sheep … doing what the organizations tell them to do ‘in their best interests’, some are leaders using paranoia and misinformation in order to achieve their goals, knowing that the majority of those listening to them won’t think or question what they say.
Personally I think that it’s too easy to vote even with showing a picture ID. I have always felt that there should be more requirements to voting. Citizenship is one thing, but as the masses are generally woefully under informed I feel that there needs to be something more … a minimum awareness of the importance and responsibility of voting … required to be a registered voter. (NOTE – I’m not saying that the ‘masses’ are too dumb to vote … I don’t believe that … I simply believe that the vast majority of the masses make no effort to be informed of important issues. If those same ‘masses’ were to put forth the effort to be informed I believe that, for the most part, they would have the intelligence needed to make a good decision (even if it was one I disagreed with.)) At the very minimum I believe that a regular civics exam should be required to keep voter registration current … if you can’t answer certain questions about how our government operates then, in my opinion, you have no business voting anyway.
I have said it before, but I feel that it bears repeating – the ‘right’ to vote is a power, and like all power it brings with it responsibility. Specifically the responsibility to be aware and informed about the issues … to know what is going on so that you can use your power in an informed manner to help steer things in the direction that you, as an informed citizen, believe is the best.
The system works so long as those voting are aware of the issues and the various solutions that might be presented. Even in a Presidential Election you aren’t voting for an individual … you are voting for a vision of the future … a set of solutions to the problems facing the nation. If you aren’t aware of the problems facing the nation, or the difference in the visions presented, how can you pick which one is the best for the country? And, as someone who works on them, let me tell you that choosing based on political commercials is one of the worst things you can do … and yet probably a good percentage of voters in any election will do just that … or worse yet, will vote for someone just because of the political party that they are affiliated with.
Monday, August 08, 2005
Strange new world
It is a crazy world we live in, wars still rage in Iraq and Afghanistan … not against the Iraqi or Afghani people, but against fanatical elements within their culture that preach hatred and intolerance. Who teach that the way into the graces of god is through the murder of those who live or believe differently.
But then … are we not there killing them? I can already hear you saying “Klik, are you loosing your nerve?” No, not in the least. We are doing what we must … as the attacks on 9/11/01, last years attacks in Spain and the recent bombings in London show, we really have no choice.
Surely they attacked us for a reason, not just to randomly kill innocent people. I am certain that they fell that the did … in their minds they had a reason, even if that reason was only a hope of spreading Islamic law. But aren’t we in essence trying to spread what we call ‘freedom’?
There is the heart of the trouble though … and the solution. We can not win this war through force of arms, though force of arms is necessary to allow us the opportunity to win. We need force of arms to show that we will not tolerate attacks on our people or our culture and that we will not cave in from fear. Force of arms, however, will not bring us victory in this war.
Sure … we could grind them into dust … hunt them all down and kill them to prevent them from killing us. But doing that would make us no different from them. Justifying murder to promote our cause and security. Some would say that is the case anyway, but I see a difference … a light that shines into this dark world. That light is hope … and in hope lays our victory. It is hope that we bring and through hope that we show ourselves.
We do not seek to change Islam … rather we seek to co-exist with it. This is the difference … this is what we must show them … that we are willing to let them be them … but only so long as they allow us to be us. If they punch us … we will punch back … if they leave us to live our lives in peace … so too will we leave them to live their lives in peace.
Opposing us are the radical Islamic clerics who seek to spread their power and influence … to bring all people under the laws of their religion and power. To let us be us would, ultimately, be contrary to that goal. They can not spread their power and influence if they allow us to maintain our own culture and moral identity. For as long as they hold the hearts and minds of the masses we will never know peace or safety because they will continue to use their influence and religious positions to rail against peaceful co-existence … against tolerance … by painting us as evil demons to be destroyed at all costs.
It is a fight, however, that they are loosing … As we show our strength in our opposition to those that kill women and children in the name of morality and god, at the same time we show our compassion in helping others and by our presence the masses begin to see. They can see that we are not the evil demons that they have been told …
The world is smaller than once it was, and we can not sit idle and ignore those who would threaten our safety to spread their own power … but neither can they easily keep their followers in dark ignorance of us.
The war is not with Islam … it is with intolerance, no mater where it festers … it is against those who would use terror and murder to further their power … it is a war that has no borders, no boundaries … and an enemy that has no face and are not confined to any specific race, culture, or religion.
But then … are we not there killing them? I can already hear you saying “Klik, are you loosing your nerve?” No, not in the least. We are doing what we must … as the attacks on 9/11/01, last years attacks in Spain and the recent bombings in London show, we really have no choice.
Surely they attacked us for a reason, not just to randomly kill innocent people. I am certain that they fell that the did … in their minds they had a reason, even if that reason was only a hope of spreading Islamic law. But aren’t we in essence trying to spread what we call ‘freedom’?
There is the heart of the trouble though … and the solution. We can not win this war through force of arms, though force of arms is necessary to allow us the opportunity to win. We need force of arms to show that we will not tolerate attacks on our people or our culture and that we will not cave in from fear. Force of arms, however, will not bring us victory in this war.
Sure … we could grind them into dust … hunt them all down and kill them to prevent them from killing us. But doing that would make us no different from them. Justifying murder to promote our cause and security. Some would say that is the case anyway, but I see a difference … a light that shines into this dark world. That light is hope … and in hope lays our victory. It is hope that we bring and through hope that we show ourselves.
We do not seek to change Islam … rather we seek to co-exist with it. This is the difference … this is what we must show them … that we are willing to let them be them … but only so long as they allow us to be us. If they punch us … we will punch back … if they leave us to live our lives in peace … so too will we leave them to live their lives in peace.
Opposing us are the radical Islamic clerics who seek to spread their power and influence … to bring all people under the laws of their religion and power. To let us be us would, ultimately, be contrary to that goal. They can not spread their power and influence if they allow us to maintain our own culture and moral identity. For as long as they hold the hearts and minds of the masses we will never know peace or safety because they will continue to use their influence and religious positions to rail against peaceful co-existence … against tolerance … by painting us as evil demons to be destroyed at all costs.
It is a fight, however, that they are loosing … As we show our strength in our opposition to those that kill women and children in the name of morality and god, at the same time we show our compassion in helping others and by our presence the masses begin to see. They can see that we are not the evil demons that they have been told …
The world is smaller than once it was, and we can not sit idle and ignore those who would threaten our safety to spread their own power … but neither can they easily keep their followers in dark ignorance of us.
The war is not with Islam … it is with intolerance, no mater where it festers … it is against those who would use terror and murder to further their power … it is a war that has no borders, no boundaries … and an enemy that has no face and are not confined to any specific race, culture, or religion.
Thursday, June 09, 2005
Welcome to the New Media Revolution
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Wednesday, June 08, 2005
Bring back the stigma
I’ve been a bit lax on the blog front lately … I’ve had some great things come to mind, but never seemed to get the energy up to write them out. This is one of those ideas … and I may combine in one of the others here as well, since the two go together pretty well.
What set me off this time was a person calling into a radio show that said “We need to do more to remove the stigma of welfare.” I think you can see from the title I choose what my opinion of that sentiment is. What the caller was basically saying is that we should make sure that people don’t feel bad about leeching off the hard work of others, and that is NOT a sentiment that I can agree with.
But wait a minute, they’ll say, not ALL people on welfare are leeching off the system.
That’s true … there are those people who use welfare as a temporary means of support to get themselves back on their feet … and that’s what the system is for. The astute reader will realize that I didn’t say ‘Abolish Welfare’ as my title. The problem with the reasoning that we should abolish the stigma of welfare because ‘not all people are leaching off the system’ is that you are also removing the stigma from those that ARE leeching off the system.
When the welfare system was introduced it worked, and it helped a lot of people turn their lives around. One of the main reasons it worked was that people were ashamed to be on it and would work extra hard to get off of it. People still had enough pride to want to make it on their own and not need the hand outs of others.
Over the years, however, there have been those that, in their attempt to be more humanitarian, have tried harder and harder to relieve people of that ‘shame’ helping them to feel better about a situation that they didn’t have control over. The theory being that by making them feel better about themselves they would see their greater potential and strive for something greater.
The fact of the matter is, however, that in most cases that isn’t how the human mind works. Generally speaking, by making them feel better about their situation you decrease their desire to change their situation. By removing the stigma of welfare you may, in fact increase the self opinion and esteem of those on welfare, but you also remove the majority of the drive for them to remove themselves from that system.
A large percentage of the people who use the welfare system properly likely do so because of their pride in their abilities … they aren’t ‘offended’ by the stigma, they are encouraged by the stigma to get back on their feet and off ‘the system’.
Too many people are on welfare, not because they can’t find a job, but because they can’t find a job that they are willing to do, or that pays what they want, or that has the benefits that they want to have. These people CHOOSE to remain unemployed and the welfare system as it currently stands allows them to make that choice … it allows them to continue leeching off the fact that other people are working to earn the money for them to live.
‘Why should I work, I can just live of the people in the country that do work … after all they’re just lucky that they got their jobs anyway, why shouldn’t I get something out of that luck?’
To help support my point I put before you the case of Farrah Gray. For those that haven’t heard the story, the man is a true American success story. Raised in the Detroit projects, his family on welfare, Mr. Gray pulled himself up and became a millionaire by the age of 14. I recently heard an interview with him where he was talking about his new book Reallionaire, and said that it all started because he felt that there had to be something more to their situation. In essence, he was uncomfortable being on welfare, and so he worked and came up with things to do to get off of that system.
Sure, he had his setbacks, and his failures. He had people that wouldn’t take him seriously and people that told him ‘it can’t be done’. He had people that thought he was a prank caller. What made him different than the ones that failed, why did he manage? Did he know someone? Did he get lucky? No … he just didn’t give up. He didn’t think ‘why me’ he thought ‘why NOT me.’
The problem is that there are too many people in this country that don’t want to believe that hard work can pay off … they don’t want to believe that someone can work hard and get ahead. Why don’t they want to believe that? Because they don’t want to work hard … they want everything handed to them … and if someone has something that they don’t it’s because ‘they got lucky’ or ‘they knew someone’ or ‘they cheated’. They can’t believe that ANYONE can make an honest living, working hard, and get ahead, because if they believe that then the only reason that they aren’t getting ahead is their own failure to work hard for it.
What set me off this time was a person calling into a radio show that said “We need to do more to remove the stigma of welfare.” I think you can see from the title I choose what my opinion of that sentiment is. What the caller was basically saying is that we should make sure that people don’t feel bad about leeching off the hard work of others, and that is NOT a sentiment that I can agree with.
But wait a minute, they’ll say, not ALL people on welfare are leeching off the system.
That’s true … there are those people who use welfare as a temporary means of support to get themselves back on their feet … and that’s what the system is for. The astute reader will realize that I didn’t say ‘Abolish Welfare’ as my title. The problem with the reasoning that we should abolish the stigma of welfare because ‘not all people are leaching off the system’ is that you are also removing the stigma from those that ARE leeching off the system.
When the welfare system was introduced it worked, and it helped a lot of people turn their lives around. One of the main reasons it worked was that people were ashamed to be on it and would work extra hard to get off of it. People still had enough pride to want to make it on their own and not need the hand outs of others.
Over the years, however, there have been those that, in their attempt to be more humanitarian, have tried harder and harder to relieve people of that ‘shame’ helping them to feel better about a situation that they didn’t have control over. The theory being that by making them feel better about themselves they would see their greater potential and strive for something greater.
The fact of the matter is, however, that in most cases that isn’t how the human mind works. Generally speaking, by making them feel better about their situation you decrease their desire to change their situation. By removing the stigma of welfare you may, in fact increase the self opinion and esteem of those on welfare, but you also remove the majority of the drive for them to remove themselves from that system.
A large percentage of the people who use the welfare system properly likely do so because of their pride in their abilities … they aren’t ‘offended’ by the stigma, they are encouraged by the stigma to get back on their feet and off ‘the system’.
Too many people are on welfare, not because they can’t find a job, but because they can’t find a job that they are willing to do, or that pays what they want, or that has the benefits that they want to have. These people CHOOSE to remain unemployed and the welfare system as it currently stands allows them to make that choice … it allows them to continue leeching off the fact that other people are working to earn the money for them to live.
‘Why should I work, I can just live of the people in the country that do work … after all they’re just lucky that they got their jobs anyway, why shouldn’t I get something out of that luck?’
To help support my point I put before you the case of Farrah Gray. For those that haven’t heard the story, the man is a true American success story. Raised in the Detroit projects, his family on welfare, Mr. Gray pulled himself up and became a millionaire by the age of 14. I recently heard an interview with him where he was talking about his new book Reallionaire, and said that it all started because he felt that there had to be something more to their situation. In essence, he was uncomfortable being on welfare, and so he worked and came up with things to do to get off of that system.
Sure, he had his setbacks, and his failures. He had people that wouldn’t take him seriously and people that told him ‘it can’t be done’. He had people that thought he was a prank caller. What made him different than the ones that failed, why did he manage? Did he know someone? Did he get lucky? No … he just didn’t give up. He didn’t think ‘why me’ he thought ‘why NOT me.’
The problem is that there are too many people in this country that don’t want to believe that hard work can pay off … they don’t want to believe that someone can work hard and get ahead. Why don’t they want to believe that? Because they don’t want to work hard … they want everything handed to them … and if someone has something that they don’t it’s because ‘they got lucky’ or ‘they knew someone’ or ‘they cheated’. They can’t believe that ANYONE can make an honest living, working hard, and get ahead, because if they believe that then the only reason that they aren’t getting ahead is their own failure to work hard for it.
Friday, May 13, 2005
Fight for your right ... to smoke?
Okay … to start with … I’m not a smoker … I’ve smoked a couple cigars, sure, but I’ve never smoked a cigarette and I don’t regularly smoke anything. My wife used to be a smoker but gave up that habit some … oh it’s been more than 6 years, and probably closer to 10 since she gave it up. In general I don’t think that smokers are the brightest bulbs in the light string, but I have to say it’s their right to kill themselves if they so desire.
‘What the heck are you rambling on about Klik?’ is what you’re probably asking right about now…. Georgia’s Governor, Sonny Perdue, signed a bill into law this week that Bans smoking in all public areas … and I believe within a certain distance of any public building. (By public building I mean any building into which the public can enter ... so stores, malls, restaurants, bars, etc.)
Am I dead set against this law? No, but I can’t say that I agree with it either, because I don’t believe that it is an appropriate use of the powers of government. If it is a building that the public HAS to visit (court houses, driver’s license office, things of that nature) then I think that it is fine to pass a law banning smoking in those areas. However, I believe that, in any establishment that the public has the option of entering, the choice of rather to allow smoking or not allow smoking should be the option of the owners of the establishment.
If the owners of an establishment that I frequent choose to allow smoking within their establishment, then I, as a non-smoker, have to decide if I want to continue going there or not. I should not, however, have the right to put a gun to the owners head and say “No … you won’t allow smoking in here.” … which is, in essence, what passing such legislation is. It is Non-smokers trying to force smokers and business owners to cater to them and treat smokers as second class citizens.
If you want to pass a law stating that business that allow smoking must put up big red signs at all entry ways that state that they allow smoking, that’s fine. I don’t have a problem with requiring that the public be informed so that they can make their decisions to enter or not on all the relevant information. Heck, you can even require the sign to state the dangers of second hand smoke if you want, but I don’t think that the government should be able to tell a business owner what they can or can’t do in their business with regards to smoking.
To be completely fair to the law it does provide an exemption for bars and restaurants that do not employ or serve anyone under 18 years of age. Still though, if a business wants to cater to smokers, and can operate a profitable business doing so, why should the government tell them that they can’t do that? Oh … that’s right … they want to protect us … they want to make sure that we don’t get injured in some way … soon they’ll be rolling out the padding for the walls and doors and putting fences up dividing the sidewalk from the road so that pedestrians don’t accidentally step out in front of moving cars …..
I’m sorry … it is not the government’s job to hold my hand and make sure that nothing bad happens to me. If you want that from the government then there are places that I believe that you can go to be committed.
There’s another issue in Georgia with smokers, however, where I DO agree with the way that it’s being handled. Georgia state employees that smoke are having their health insurance premiums raised by $40 a month more than non-smokers. (They are doing the smoker/non-smoker thing on the honor system, but if you are caught lying about your smoking status then you loose ALL health coverage for a year.)
In general, smokers get sick more often, need more frequent and more expensive medical treatment, and have other workplace related issues. In short having one smoker on a company health insurance policy can raise the premiums of every employee by quite a bit. It is their choice to smoke … if they don’t want to pay $40 more a month for health care then guess what … they can stop smoking. Hell … chances are pretty good with most smokers that they can save enough to cover that $40 a month just by cutting their cigarette use back.
Is it their right to smoke if they want? Sure it is. But there is nothing that is forcing them to smoke … it is a choice … if they make the choice to smoke, then they can pay the price. Everyone is responsible for the choices they make … and everyone has to face the consequences of those choices, be they good or bad.
Personally I believe that any employer should not only have the right to put more of the cost of the health coverage on those in the company who choose to make that coverage cost more. I will even go so far as to say that it should be the employers right to refuse to employ someone that smokes or refuse to include them in the company health coverage …. As long as such a rule is employed fairly in all cases (meaning that smoker_a and smoker_b are both denied employment due to their smoking habit and if the rule is put into place in a work place that has a mix of smokers and non-smokers then the smokers should be given a reasonable deadline to quit the habit.)
Some people are concerned that this would be used as a precedent to raise the rates or deny coverage to others with existing conditions. My answer to that is … if the existing conditions are the result of a choice and are ‘quitable’ then I don’t see where the problem is.
My choices are my responsibility … nobody else’s … Your choices are YOUR responsibility … nobody else’s.
‘What the heck are you rambling on about Klik?’ is what you’re probably asking right about now…. Georgia’s Governor, Sonny Perdue, signed a bill into law this week that Bans smoking in all public areas … and I believe within a certain distance of any public building. (By public building I mean any building into which the public can enter ... so stores, malls, restaurants, bars, etc.)
Am I dead set against this law? No, but I can’t say that I agree with it either, because I don’t believe that it is an appropriate use of the powers of government. If it is a building that the public HAS to visit (court houses, driver’s license office, things of that nature) then I think that it is fine to pass a law banning smoking in those areas. However, I believe that, in any establishment that the public has the option of entering, the choice of rather to allow smoking or not allow smoking should be the option of the owners of the establishment.
If the owners of an establishment that I frequent choose to allow smoking within their establishment, then I, as a non-smoker, have to decide if I want to continue going there or not. I should not, however, have the right to put a gun to the owners head and say “No … you won’t allow smoking in here.” … which is, in essence, what passing such legislation is. It is Non-smokers trying to force smokers and business owners to cater to them and treat smokers as second class citizens.
If you want to pass a law stating that business that allow smoking must put up big red signs at all entry ways that state that they allow smoking, that’s fine. I don’t have a problem with requiring that the public be informed so that they can make their decisions to enter or not on all the relevant information. Heck, you can even require the sign to state the dangers of second hand smoke if you want, but I don’t think that the government should be able to tell a business owner what they can or can’t do in their business with regards to smoking.
To be completely fair to the law it does provide an exemption for bars and restaurants that do not employ or serve anyone under 18 years of age. Still though, if a business wants to cater to smokers, and can operate a profitable business doing so, why should the government tell them that they can’t do that? Oh … that’s right … they want to protect us … they want to make sure that we don’t get injured in some way … soon they’ll be rolling out the padding for the walls and doors and putting fences up dividing the sidewalk from the road so that pedestrians don’t accidentally step out in front of moving cars …..
I’m sorry … it is not the government’s job to hold my hand and make sure that nothing bad happens to me. If you want that from the government then there are places that I believe that you can go to be committed.
There’s another issue in Georgia with smokers, however, where I DO agree with the way that it’s being handled. Georgia state employees that smoke are having their health insurance premiums raised by $40 a month more than non-smokers. (They are doing the smoker/non-smoker thing on the honor system, but if you are caught lying about your smoking status then you loose ALL health coverage for a year.)
In general, smokers get sick more often, need more frequent and more expensive medical treatment, and have other workplace related issues. In short having one smoker on a company health insurance policy can raise the premiums of every employee by quite a bit. It is their choice to smoke … if they don’t want to pay $40 more a month for health care then guess what … they can stop smoking. Hell … chances are pretty good with most smokers that they can save enough to cover that $40 a month just by cutting their cigarette use back.
Is it their right to smoke if they want? Sure it is. But there is nothing that is forcing them to smoke … it is a choice … if they make the choice to smoke, then they can pay the price. Everyone is responsible for the choices they make … and everyone has to face the consequences of those choices, be they good or bad.
Personally I believe that any employer should not only have the right to put more of the cost of the health coverage on those in the company who choose to make that coverage cost more. I will even go so far as to say that it should be the employers right to refuse to employ someone that smokes or refuse to include them in the company health coverage …. As long as such a rule is employed fairly in all cases (meaning that smoker_a and smoker_b are both denied employment due to their smoking habit and if the rule is put into place in a work place that has a mix of smokers and non-smokers then the smokers should be given a reasonable deadline to quit the habit.)
Some people are concerned that this would be used as a precedent to raise the rates or deny coverage to others with existing conditions. My answer to that is … if the existing conditions are the result of a choice and are ‘quitable’ then I don’t see where the problem is.
My choices are my responsibility … nobody else’s … Your choices are YOUR responsibility … nobody else’s.
Thursday, May 05, 2005
It's about responsibility
Okay there are a couple of stories that have prompted this particular entry and I’ll discuss them individually.
First … the case of the local ‘runaway bride’ … for those that don’t know the story: A local woman, Jennifer, was supposed to be married to her fiancé on Saturday April 30th. On Tuesday, April 26th, Jennifer went for her nightly run and never returned. State and Local police (and eventually federal police) looked for her and on Saturday she called ‘911’ in New Mexico claiming to have been abducted. After about 4 hours she changed her story and said that she had just ‘snapped’ and hopped on a greyhound bus to run away from it all. It has since been reported that the bus ticket was purchased roughly a week in advance of her disappearance.
The search cost the county an estimated $60,000, plus I believe that there were state funds used in addition to that amount. Local and State Law Enforcement officers were diverted from other duties in this effort. The District Attorney is looking at criminal charges and there’s a big debate as to what to do with the ‘runaway bride’. (Her family has forgiven her and her fiancé says he still wants to marry her.)
Some people say that she should be prosecuted and repay the full cost of the search as well as other penalties. Others say that she should get a ‘pass’ because she wasn’t in her rational mind and didn’t intend for all this to happen.
I think the answer here lies somewhere in the middle … as answers often do. We can’t just give her a pass because she didn’t ‘intend’ for this to happen … certainly she shouldn’t be punished as harshly as someone who intentionally caused these problems … but there are a lot of times where actions have un-intended results that can result in criminal prosecution. That she wasn’t in a rational state of mind and didn’t think of the possible consequences is, likewise, no reason to ‘give her a pass’ …. No … she has to take responsibility for the consequences of her actions, un-intended though they may have been. To do otherwise is to say that the actions are acceptable.
I believe that the only actual law that she broke was in lying to law enforcement officials so any criminal prosecution could carry a 5 year jail sentence. Now I believe that is a ‘maximum sentence’ and thus not likely what she would face in this instance. But I have to say that I don’t believe that jail time is necessary for this case … I would honestly rather have her have to put in some time at a crisis center or other similar community service. The money is another issue … I’d like to see her pay back that cost to the county … enforcing that, however, is likely an issue. Technically the money was spent at the request of the family and at a point when nothing that Jennifer had done was against the law.
To me … the best resolution for this case would be for Jennifer to come forward and workout an agreement with the DA in the case and take responsibility for her actions of her own accord.
The other case is a different side of things. At Dacula High in northern Georgia, a science teacher know to the students as ‘Doc’ (I’m too lazy to look up the story and actually get his name at the moment) has a long standing policy that students caught sleeping or otherwise not paying attention in class receive either a zero or half credit depending on the assignment. Well … Football Jock_01 fell asleep in class and *gasp* got a zero on the days assignment.
Well Mr. Jock apparently didn’t like being held responsible for falling asleep in class and complained to his father … Jock Sr. then marched down to the School Principal’s office and complained that Jock Jr. shouldn’t be given a zero for falling asleep in class and the principal agreed, and told ‘Doc’ to change the grade. Doc, however, felt that there was a principle at stake here and said that the student knew the rule and that the zero would not be changed.
Doc has been suspended for using grades to discipline students. (Okay … hold on a second … teachers can’t use grades to discipline students … they can’t physically discipline students and they can’t remove students from their classes … how exactly IS a teacher supposed to discipline their students? Harsh Language? Oh wait … no … that’s not allowed either.)
It’s a simple matter … you break the rules, you pay the price … Doc’s rule was (in essence) no sleeping in class … the price was a zero. Get off the teacher’s case and let him do his job.
It seems though that the students aren’t taking this quietly …. They have begun protesting the suspension of Doc with posters, T-Shirts, buttons and petitions aimed at getting Doc back in the classroom. At one speaking engagement when the Principal got up to the podium to speak students began loudly chanting “Doc! Doc! Doc!”
Wow … students that want a teacher that holds to his rules and applies them to everyone. Who don’t want one student to avoid his responsibility just because he’s a Jock…
Maybe there’s hope in the world after all…..
First … the case of the local ‘runaway bride’ … for those that don’t know the story: A local woman, Jennifer, was supposed to be married to her fiancé on Saturday April 30th. On Tuesday, April 26th, Jennifer went for her nightly run and never returned. State and Local police (and eventually federal police) looked for her and on Saturday she called ‘911’ in New Mexico claiming to have been abducted. After about 4 hours she changed her story and said that she had just ‘snapped’ and hopped on a greyhound bus to run away from it all. It has since been reported that the bus ticket was purchased roughly a week in advance of her disappearance.
The search cost the county an estimated $60,000, plus I believe that there were state funds used in addition to that amount. Local and State Law Enforcement officers were diverted from other duties in this effort. The District Attorney is looking at criminal charges and there’s a big debate as to what to do with the ‘runaway bride’. (Her family has forgiven her and her fiancé says he still wants to marry her.)
Some people say that she should be prosecuted and repay the full cost of the search as well as other penalties. Others say that she should get a ‘pass’ because she wasn’t in her rational mind and didn’t intend for all this to happen.
I think the answer here lies somewhere in the middle … as answers often do. We can’t just give her a pass because she didn’t ‘intend’ for this to happen … certainly she shouldn’t be punished as harshly as someone who intentionally caused these problems … but there are a lot of times where actions have un-intended results that can result in criminal prosecution. That she wasn’t in a rational state of mind and didn’t think of the possible consequences is, likewise, no reason to ‘give her a pass’ …. No … she has to take responsibility for the consequences of her actions, un-intended though they may have been. To do otherwise is to say that the actions are acceptable.
I believe that the only actual law that she broke was in lying to law enforcement officials so any criminal prosecution could carry a 5 year jail sentence. Now I believe that is a ‘maximum sentence’ and thus not likely what she would face in this instance. But I have to say that I don’t believe that jail time is necessary for this case … I would honestly rather have her have to put in some time at a crisis center or other similar community service. The money is another issue … I’d like to see her pay back that cost to the county … enforcing that, however, is likely an issue. Technically the money was spent at the request of the family and at a point when nothing that Jennifer had done was against the law.
To me … the best resolution for this case would be for Jennifer to come forward and workout an agreement with the DA in the case and take responsibility for her actions of her own accord.
The other case is a different side of things. At Dacula High in northern Georgia, a science teacher know to the students as ‘Doc’ (I’m too lazy to look up the story and actually get his name at the moment) has a long standing policy that students caught sleeping or otherwise not paying attention in class receive either a zero or half credit depending on the assignment. Well … Football Jock_01 fell asleep in class and *gasp* got a zero on the days assignment.
Well Mr. Jock apparently didn’t like being held responsible for falling asleep in class and complained to his father … Jock Sr. then marched down to the School Principal’s office and complained that Jock Jr. shouldn’t be given a zero for falling asleep in class and the principal agreed, and told ‘Doc’ to change the grade. Doc, however, felt that there was a principle at stake here and said that the student knew the rule and that the zero would not be changed.
Doc has been suspended for using grades to discipline students. (Okay … hold on a second … teachers can’t use grades to discipline students … they can’t physically discipline students and they can’t remove students from their classes … how exactly IS a teacher supposed to discipline their students? Harsh Language? Oh wait … no … that’s not allowed either.)
It’s a simple matter … you break the rules, you pay the price … Doc’s rule was (in essence) no sleeping in class … the price was a zero. Get off the teacher’s case and let him do his job.
It seems though that the students aren’t taking this quietly …. They have begun protesting the suspension of Doc with posters, T-Shirts, buttons and petitions aimed at getting Doc back in the classroom. At one speaking engagement when the Principal got up to the podium to speak students began loudly chanting “Doc! Doc! Doc!”
Wow … students that want a teacher that holds to his rules and applies them to everyone. Who don’t want one student to avoid his responsibility just because he’s a Jock…
Maybe there’s hope in the world after all…..
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