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.

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.

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.

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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.

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.

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…..

Economics of Fair Tax

Okay … before I go onto the rant about the weak criminal justice system in this country and how it got that way, I want to take a moment to bring up some points of the Fair Tax plan.

I’ll be excepting most of these points from an email sent to me by the Fair Tax Organization (http://www.fairtax.org/) as it contains several points that I had not considered and I think it very well shows some of the many normally unconsidered benefits of the plan.

Now … before I go onto that … The Fair Tax plan wasn’t just created by a single congressman … it was developed by a panel of researchers and economists that were tasked with the job of coming up with the simplest method of changing the current tax system while maintaining the current federal government budget requirements. This isn’t something that a couple of politicians threw together on a napkin over a cup of coffee at 2am …

“The FairTax bill currently in Congress (House Resolution 25/Senate Resolution 25) proposes completely eliminating the income tax and replacing it with a national sales tax (consumption tax). This non-partisan bill, developed after eight years of study by the country’s leading economists and co-sponsored by 32 legislators, proposes a progressive national sales tax of 23 cents out of every dollar spent on personal consumption in order to raise the amount currently raised through corporate and personal income taxes.”

This 23 cents on the dollar tax always makes people go ‘OMG things will cost 23% more!!1!” But research studies and leading economists disagree:

“THE FAIR TAX WILL BE A TREMENDOUS BOOST TO OUR ECONOMY! The cost of tax compliance and payroll taxes is built into the price of every good or service we currently purchase. Eliminating these costs will reduce production costs of U.S. products by an estimated 22%; therefore, prices will not go up. Foreign goods for sale in the U.S. will also be taxed, making American products 20% to 30% more competitive at home and abroad. Dr. Laurence Kotlikoff, chair of the economics department at Boston University, estimated that the move to a broad-based consumption tax would add a 7% to 14% increase in GDP.”

Studies actually show that through market place competition pre-tax prices will drop 20-22% on most goods … so an item that currently costs $100 (pre local tax) a 20% price drop would make it an $80 pre-tax … add the 23% tax and you have a final out of pocket cost of $98.40 … if you say a 7% state and local sales tax as well then you’re looking at 30% sales tax so the new $80 pre-tax price becomes $104 after all taxes are paid (keeping in mind that the after tax price with a 7% tax is currently $107). (Note of course that the Fair Tax proposal is a federal matter so does nothing to change any state tax systems currently in place – nor does it account for such systems in its calculations.) This would take a little time for the market to adjust of course depending on how the Fair Tax system is implemented there would likely be an adjustment period were prices were higher as both retail stores and manufacturers soaked in a little extra profit.

“BUSINESSES AND INDIVIDUALS WILL NO LONGER HAVE TO SPEND OVER $250 BILLION EACH YEAR IN COMPLIANCE COSTS. By not having to pay the costs of tax planning and filing, businesses will have more money to invest in expansion and modernization for global competitiveness. Individuals – wage earners – will be able to buy more, save more and invest more.”

Keep in mind also that less tax prep and compliance costs for businesses also means that they have more cash available to put into employee wages. While I doubt that any of us wage earners would see immediate raises there would be a greater likelihood of such over time. In the mean time we would have the advantage of taking home most or all of our paycheck (State withholdings would still apply.) so that would seem like a raise.

To that point – “With the FairTax, there will be no Federal payroll deductions of any kind – no income tax, no Social Security tax, no Medicare tax and no self-employment tax. FairTax provisions will provide monthly “prebate” reimbursements on essential living expenses and prebate all taxes to those spending under the poverty line.”

This ‘prebate’ would be provided to all households. A married couple with no children (family of 2) would receive a monthly check for about $357 so in addition to taking home most or all of your paycheck, you’d receive an extra $357 a month to cover all or some of your tax expenditure. A family of 4 would receive an estimated $479 a month.

“Our current income tax exports our jobs, rather than our products, but the FairTax allows U.S. exports to sell overseas for prices 22% lower, on average, than they do now – with similar profit margins. Lower prices sharply increase demand for U.S. exports, thereby increasing job creation in our country’s manufacturing sectors. America will be virtually the only country selling products abroad at prices that do not include a tax component in the price. As a result, multinational companies will flock to setup shop in the U.S.”

Again, not something that would happen over night by any means, but certainly a good thing for the American worker and economy.

“Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan recently testified to the President’s Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform that, ‘A consumption tax would be the best from the perspective of promoting economic growth …’”

One of the things that opponents to a consumption tax (a tax on spending rather than income) frequently fail to take into account is the simple fact that with the economic growth that would be stimulated would result in job growth, increased pay, and better economic long term stability.

Now a few rebuttals to some of the things that I’ve heard –

People will start using the barter system to buy things

That’s going to be a fun trick … how many people in this country create a good or service that they could reliably trade to the grocery store for their food? Or the clothing store for the cloths that they need? Am I going to cut out the stores and go offer the farmer, what, my TV in exchange for some meat and vegetables? The fact of the matter is that a Sales Tax is not easily gotten around … with the current income tax system you only need one person conspiring to evade it (by lying on their return, not filing, etc) … with a sales tax you need at least two people (buyer and seller). Will it happen? To a degree, yes. But realistically the rate of such things is going to be low, and will likely be even lower than the evasion rate under the current tax system.

(for the National Retail Federation) People will SAVE their money and that will hurt the economy!

Um … no. First off unless people are stuffing their money into their mattress then they are probably saving it in a bank or other investment (IRA, Stock, Bond, etc) which means that money is directly helping the economy grow. (What … you don’t think that the bank pays you interest out of the goodness of their hearts do you? They invest the money in your savings account.) Secondly while people may save some or even most of the ‘additional’ money that they get from their paychecks very few people spend less when they have more … meaning that on the whole people will tend to spend the same amount that they are now and will most likely spend more than they do now.

Yes they will also likely save more than they do now … but if they receive $100 more a week in their paycheck from the removal of the federal withholdings and they save $80 and spend $20 of it, that’s a $20 a week INCREASE in spending. (And that $80 a week increase in savings makes them more financially stable and helps the economy.)

The fact of the matter is that currently the US has anemic savings rates and that is one of the MAJOR factors hurting our overall economy.

The government will know everything we spend our money on!

Okay, blatant paranoia aside. They actually won’t know anymore than they do currently. In fact technically they’ll know less. Under the current system the government gets an annual report on our income, family size, financial situation (if you itemize), Marital status, and everyone in your family’s social security number. Under the Fair Tax plan … all they would get is your family’s social security numbers (as that would be used to register for the ‘prebate’) the tax collection is a ‘blind tax’ (meaning it’s collected anonymously) just as state/local sales taxes are now … you don’t show an ID or have the sales tax amount logged in your name currently.

Those are the only ones that I can remember off the top of my head … I’m sure I’ll think of more later and I’ll put them into another entry when I do. (I can think of one more, the ‘additional tax on the poor’ but I think I covered that in the last entry where I discussed the Fair Tax Legislation. I’m serious about this folks … we need to do something with the tax system in this country, but the only way it’s going to happen is if we the people stand up and make our representatives in federal government do what we want … regardless of the special interest groups …

Stand together and don’t back down.

Parents, Kids, and Death

With all the news stories of kids going missing and getting killed I sometimes wonder how any survive to adulthood these days. The other side of that is, how can parents today see these stories on the news and then turn around and have it happen to them?

Some of you likely heard the story from East Georgia this past weekend where two children, ages 2 and 3 years, went missing on Saturday prompting a police search, etc. The kids were found on Monday morning in a sewage pond a mile and a half from their home, dead. Currently there are no signs of abduction or violence and the cause of death appears to be accidental drowning as of Tuesday’s coroner’s report.

So it appears that the two children wandered out of their home on Saturday, wandered a mile and a half where they both fell into this algae covered sewage pond and drowned. But let’s look at this tragic story a bit more … not only did the two children wander out of the house … it was the second time that day that the kids had wandered out, the first time a neighbor found the kids wandering in the neighborhood and brought them home. Reportedly one of the two kids was known to have figured out how to unlock and open the front door (I’ve heard it was the 3 year old and that it was the 2 year old so I’m leaving it at ‘one of the two’).

Let me get this straight … you have a kid 2 or 3 years old that you KNOW has figured out how to unlock and open the front door … your neighbor has already brought the kids back to the house once because you obviously weren’t paying attention to where they were or what they were doing … and you do nothing to prevent the situation from happening again, either by watching them more closely or taking steps to make sure that they can’t just unlock the door and wander out again, or both? ARE YOU BRAIN DEAD?

Now cases like the guy in Florida earlier this month that raped and killed the little girl are one issue … though parents should be aware that these nutcases are out there and should be responsible enough to keep a close watch on their kids and protect them from such predators there is a failing in the jail system in this country that gives these people entirely too many chances. The man in that case had something along the lines of 25 prior arrests and had reportedly BEGGED to be kept locked up because he said that if he was released that he WOULD do it again. That, however, is a rant for another day.

How is it that parents … in a world where there is some story about kids being killed, abducted, or otherwise separated from their parents long enough to make it on the news on a weekly basis … can be so mindless and negligent as to let their own kids walk out the front door, wander a mile and a half from the house, and drown. Last time I checked the average 2 and 3 year old weren’t exactly doing 15min miles … When I was 2 or 3 years old … if I’d walked out the front door … at MOST I would have got to the edge of the yard before one of my parents picked me up and took me back inside … and trust me … when I was 2 or 3 our yard wasn’t what most people would call large.

Is the world really more dangerous today? Or are more parents simply extra negligent … or am I’m just more aware of it than I was in the past?

OMG they might SAVE!

Okay … to an extent this is old news … It’s a rant that I’ve been meaning to write for several weeks now, but haven’t had the time, energy, or motivation to put fingers to keyboard. I expect, however, that I’ll get around to firing up the old blog for a few entries over the next couple of weeks.

At this point April 15th has come and gone. Americans across the country have spent a horrendous amount of combined man-hours and money laboring under an archaic tax system that needs revision. Many of you that know me already know that I support a new tax law proposed by Congressman John Linder (R-GA) commonly known at the Fair Tax Plan (Details can be found at http://www.fairtax.org/ including a rebuttal section that explores some of the more common arguments against the plan) which would make April 15th ‘just another day’ by doing away with income tax and replacing it with a consumption tax (thus taxing DISPOSABLE income as opposed to all income).

I almost regret that both my US Senators and my Congressman already support this legislation as it means that I can’t call/mail/etc them to urge them to support the proposal. (I do email them to thank them for supporting it though.) The Fair Tax movement has grown substantially over the last couple of years and with the coverage that it gained over the last election period it gained the ear of President Bush … it also gained it’s first ‘organized’ opposition.

Now there has, of course, been opposition to the Fair Tax plan before this, but it was individuals or small groups of people that were largely unfamiliar with the bill and made blanket statements such as ‘it will just be an additional tax on the poor!’ (Since it repeals the current income tax completely it can hardly be considered an ‘additional tax’ … second off the poor, along with everyone else, would get their ENTIRE paycheck (no withholding payroll taxes) AND they would get a check for the amount that they would be expected to pay in tax for the ‘essentials’ (food, clothing, shelter) so that in essence they would pay zero tax.)

Now, however, a major organization has stepped forward and made a stance against the Fair Tax plan. The National Retail Federation is opposed to the fair tax and has apparently urged their member organizations (mostly major retail stores such as Home Depot and others) to oppose the legislation.

But why is it that this particular special interest group has stepped forward to combat this Tax Legislation? Because they’re afraid that people, once given their entire paycheck, might choose to save some of their money. OMG the HORROR! Americans, in particular the poor and middle class, might actually SAVE their own money for retirement or *gasp* for a rainy day.

What it boils down to is that the National Retail Federation wants every American to spend 100% of their Net income … or even better spend 150%. Don’t save any of it! SPEND SPEND SPEND! Never mind that part of the problem with the economy is a low savings rate … never mind that people in this country could live better longer with a little more money in their pockets … never mind that it might mean that there are less bankruptcy cases as people have more net income due to the removal of federal withholding taxes.

This same organization supports and fights for the Bush tax cuts, and states that the tax cuts are directly responsible for increased spending and economic growth because the cuts put more money in the hands of the American people to spend. Never mind that with the Fair Tax plan I (and most Americans) would receive most of the 28% or more that is withheld from their paychecks … never mind the myriad of economic studies that show that the Fair Tax would result in enormous economic growth for this country. Never mind any of that … people might SAVE!

Do you remember the first real paycheck you got? If you’re like most Americans, when you looked at that paycheck stub your jaw dropped as you realized how much was being withheld for tax purposes. I want you to relive that … look at those withholdings every time you get a paycheck and realize that there is an alternative. You and every American could be receiving all of those federal withholdings (Federal, Social Security, Medicare) yourself AND receiving a check from the federal government in compensation for your estimated tax on essential items.

I urge you ALL to become informed about the Fair Tax proposal, and if you support it, to lend your voice to the cause. Individually there’s not much we can do …. Together, there is nothing that we can’t.

The Courts and Death

As I’m sure most of you by now know Terry Schiavo died today. Yes my last entry I stated that I believed that the tube should remain removed and that Terry should be allowed to die. She should have been allowed to die in 2001 the first time the tube was removed. Even so I give my sympathy to her parents, and hope that now that it is final that they will be able to move on with their lives and continue to live their lives with happy memories of Terry rather than the years of legal battles and television interviews that they forced themselves to go through. It is my hope that they can come to see the this final answer is what was best for Terry, even if it’s not what they wanted.

However, I keep hearing certain things repeated over and over … and I’m tired of it.

The courts killed Terry.

No, they didn’t. That is simply the rhetoric of the ‘right to life’ crowd … the courts did not order that Terry be killed, nor did they order that anyone kill her. The court’s ruling was simple … that Michael Schiavo was Terry’s legal guardian and, as such, he had the legal right to have the tube removed. The court also ruled that it would be ‘unlawful’ for anyone to prevent him from removing the tube or otherwise interfere without Michael’s consent.

Given the fact that Michael wanted the tube removed did that ruling mean that Terry would likely die because Michael would remove the tube? Yes. But although it may seem cold and heartless, that isn’t the concern of the court … the concern of the court was … who in the eyes of the law has the authority to make that decision in the case of Terry Schiavo?

If she’d had a living will we wouldn’t be having this fight.

More than likely this is incorrect. First off, living wills aren’t quite so cut and dry and they ultimately rely on an executor that is willing to carry them out. Secondly, just like a normal ‘last will and testament’, they can be contested by family members that disagree with the situation. From what I’ve seen of the parents they would likely have contested any living will bringing us right back to the court battle that we’ve had over the last several years.

This creates a precedent that could lead to the court condemning handicapped people to death.

No, not at all. First there is the point I made above, the court ruling did not order Terry’s death. It ruled that Michael, as her legal guardian, had sole authority to make that choice and no one could interfere with it. Second off, because of the previous statement, there would have to be a legal guardian that was trying to kill the handicapped person through removal of a feeding tube or other form of life support …

The court ignored the law passed by congress and the President.

Well … there are a whole slew of issues there. Ignoring the issues with passing a law for a specific person and the questions of whether congress or the president should be involved at all, there is a very dangerous precedent in that. The ‘law’ that congress passed stated that the Court HAD to review the case as if it was a brand new case and had never before been heard by the court. … What’s the danger in that you ask? Simple … it opens the door to congress forcing ANY ruling that they don’t agree with to be reheard by the court as a new case. If the result of that review wasn’t to their liking they could just bounce it back to the court again … and again … and again … until they get a ruling they like and clogging up the judicial system in the mean time. (Or until they just couldn’t get enough votes to pass the ‘law’)

I don’t always agree with the courts, but I believe that in this case they did their job.

Time to Let Go

I’m sure by now that you have all heard about the Terry Schiavo case in Florida. The woman is brain damaged and some doctors say that she is in a ‘persistent vegetative state.’ She has been this way for 15 years. Her husband says that she had told him that she did not want her life artificially extended through life support, her parents deny that.

But her parents are in denial about a lot of things. Not the least of which is the fact that their daughter is already gone. I challenge just about anyone that reads this to watch the video of Terry that the family has released and tell me that you would WANT to live that way. What quality of life does Terry have … they say that her husband is trying to murder her … it looks to me more like they are trying to torture her.

The good news is that if Terry DOES somehow … against the best projections of doctors … ‘wake up’ she’ll have completely missed the Clinton presidency and all of the insanity that went with it.

They say that the courts and the doctors are ‘playing God’ in forcing the removal of the feeding tube … the only way that Terry is able to get the nutrition that she needs to keep her alive. I would say that the people ‘playing God’ are the people keeping her alive through artificial means. If you want to bring God into this then take the feeding tube out and let God decide if Terry lives or dies … if God wants her to live then she’ll recover enough to eat and drink in order to get the nutrition that she needs to continue to survive.

Terry’s parents say that her husband, Michael Schiavo, is just trying to get her life insurance money … but Michael has turned down offers of millions of dollars to let her live … they also say that he just wants her dead so that he can marry his girlfriend and have begged him to divorce their daughter and let them care for her.

That would have been the easy way out for Michael. This battle has been raging since 2001 … the first time that the courts ordered the tube removed … it was then ordered re-inserted when a new witness surfaced. The tube was ordered removed again in 2003 but 6 days later Gov Jeb Bush of Florida passed a law called “Terry’s Law” that effectively made Terry a ward of the state and took away Michael’s rights to her care and had the tube re-inserted again. The Florida Supreme Court later ruled that the Governor had overstepped his authority and declared “Terry’s Law” unconstitutional leading to the Feb 2005 court ruling to remove the tube for a third time.

So why would someone turn down millions of dollars to continue the legal fight to let his wife die naturally? Why would he refuse the easy ‘uncontested’ divorce in favor of long drawn out court battles? Money? Not likely … the trust fund from her malpractice suit has been emptied and I find it unlikely that her ‘life insurance’ would match the offers of millions. To marry another? I’m sure that Michael will likely re-marry after Terry dies … he has children and has been involved with this other woman for several years now … but it would have been much easier to do that if he’d just given in and divorced Terry. The only answer that truly makes sense is that he really believes that it is what Terry wants … and that he could not, in clear conscious, let her parents have their way against Terry’s wishes.

There are plenty of you that read this and know me personally … to all of you I say publicly don’t let that happen to me. I do not want to be kept alive through artificial means … I don’t want to be a lump in a hospital bed with machines keeping me alive. If it is me there in Terry’s place … pull the plug … and if the government tells you that you can’t pull the plug … put a bullet in my head instead.

To Terry’s parents I say … your daughter is gone … you are not helping her with this fight … you are not giving her a better life … you are not saving her. It’s time to let her go.

Garage Jumping

Okay … The lawsuit mentality in this country is flat out of hand. No matter how stupid, or illegal, an act you commit it seems that you are not only able to sue someone else for it, but WIN.

Two cases I’ve heard about recently have really got my blood boiling … its ridiculous and it needs to be stopped. The problem, however, goes beyond just the courts system … it goes all the way down to the juries themselves. The juries have it in their power to STOP the nonsense but they continue to encourage it instead.

This isn’t a small problem either … it has MANY implications on things that too many people just don’t consider.

First let’s look at a case out of Orlando, FL. Just a bit of background … Some of the younger population of the Orlando area have taken to the trend of “Garage Jumping” … the art of jumping from the top of one parking garage to the top of another.

Well in the recent case, reported originally on Feb 28th 2005, one local teen was following his friends when he failed to reach the other side and fell 6 stories where he was knocked unconscious. So what is the father’s answer to his son’s stupidity? SUE THE GARAGE OWNER! Get me some phat cash for this one!!

Never mind the fact that they were trespassing … never mind that they entered the garage illegally … never mind that they chose of their own free will to try and jump between these garages. They knew the risk when they jumped … it was 6 stories to the ground … chances were pretty good that it would be a fatal fall. So the kid gets lucky and survives a failed attempt … and they are going to sue the city and the garage owner for not stopping him.

Okay … so now it is the responsibility of the city and private property owners to make sure that YOU don’t do something completely STUPID. Screw it … lets just make it so that everyone is completely safe no matter what stupid thing they try … lets gate all the sidewalks in cities so that people can’t stupidly step out in front of a car or truck. Require padding on all the walls and doors so people don’t accidentally run into them and hurt themselves.

How about this … lets lock the kid up for trespassing and reckless endangerment (of himself and anyone he might accidentally land on) … lets teach the kid a friggin lesson in personal responsibility because it’s obvious that his dad doesn’t have a clue.

The other case that I heard about in conjunction with this was a reported case (I haven’t been able to find specifics) in which a thief broke into a house, and in the process of robbing it fell down the stairs and broke his leg. After his arrest the thief sued the homeowner for personal injury and won the case…. I didn’t hear what the jury awarded the thief … but it was apparently a good sized sum of money.

Yes … that’s right … if someone BREAKS INTO YOUR HOUSE and gets injured robbing you they can SUE YOU … so make sure it’s safe glass and put safety equipment around to make sure that potential robbers don’t slip and fall or anything.

These lawsuits fail to teach people the lessons of personal responsibility that they need to be learning, but they have other detrimental effects as well. Namely and most importantly they drive up EVERYONE’S insurance premiums. Because, you see, they juries look at it as “well it’s just those rich insurance companies that have to pay … give them the money” … they always seem to conveniently forget that the insurance companies GET the money in the form of Insurance Premiums … as more of these suits go through and the awards get higher the Insurance companies have to raise premiums in order to cover possible law suits.

In other words … EVERYONE ends up paying for this crap. Do you know how much the imbedded liability cost is on everything you buy? Well … about 20% of what you pay at the store is sales tax and other imbedded taxes … about 40% is imbedded liability costs both the Liability Insurance that the companies have to carry AND the cost of the lawyers that the company must retain to help protect itself …. In other words … that parking garage has liability insurance … that cost makes up about 40% of the cost of parking there … if the suit is successful their insurance is going to go up … therefore the cost of parking is going to go up … plus they will tack on a portion of the cost associated with preventing other idiots from doing the same thing.

Not to mention that crap like this fills up the courts and is the result of about half our legal problems.

Let’s get a grip on this folks … charge the kid as I mentioned above, and slap the father with about a $500,000 fine for a frivolous lawsuit.

On Diplomacy

Okay … I was listening to the news on the way into work this morning. They were reporting on President Bush’s current trip to Europe where they have been discussing Iran and nuclear weapons. Germany, France, Britain, and just about everyone else agrees that Iran ‘must not get nuclear weapons’ but the reporter continued to say that several of the European leaders are disturbed that President Bush had ‘not ruled out the military option.’

Well “DUH!”

Let me give you a little hint … ‘the military option’ is what makes diplomacy work. If there is no threat of military retaliation then there is absolutely NO reason for anyone not to do just whatever it is that they want to do. Economic sanctions DON’T WORK … they never have. The only people such sanctions are going to hurt are the average people … the leaders of the country won’t be effected in the least and frankly could care less if the people under them suffer as a result of the sanctions … it’s too easy to take that and turn it into hatred of the ‘western demons.’

So no, he hasn’t ruled out the ‘military option’ because to do so would be to weaken the diplomatic effort to the point of being pointless.

I’m not saying that the leaders of Iran are ‘savages that only understand force’ I am saying that ANY people or even any individual will only react to the threat behind diplomacy. Yes, I know that you like to think that you are above all that … better than that … but face it … if you KNEW that there would be absolutely NO consequence to your actions … or no consequence that would effect you at least … there would be almost nothing that you wouldn’t do.

Paying taxes … why do you do it? Because if you don’t the government will come arrest you and throw you in prison … if you resist that then they will use their guns to make you comply … if you resist forcefully enough they will use deadly force to enforce the law. So ultimately it is the ‘military threat’ that makes you pay your taxes or obey the laws … why would we expect any other county to respect our wishes or the wishes of the ‘global community’ any more than that?

President Bush is playing the game the way that it must be played … military force is the strength behind diplomacy it is ALWAYS ‘in the folder’ he’s just not hiding it under pretty flowers.

Communication and other thoughts

I started thinking about this after reading my friend Quadrazu’s article The Two Barriers over on The Vertex, and was originally going to leave it at just my comment there. However, I was listening to the radio on my way home last night and heard something that clicked that magic lever and got my writing wheels turning as it picked up nicely on that theme.

I was listening to Sean Hannity’s show as he spoke to Paris Anderson, the NAACP’s Media Coordinator who was presenting Sean with the NAACP Excellence in Media Award. During the course of their conversation about the award Mr. Anderson said to Sean ‘more people in this country are separated by communication than by color or race.’

The quote may not be exact as I was driving at the time and didn’t have time to jot it down until I arrived at home, but that is reasonably close. He continued to express his opinion that a majority of the problems in this country, and the world, are a result of communication failures.

He went on to discuss how one of the biggest communication issues was in communicating the conservative ideals to the black community. That the black community has predominately embraced the liberal in part because they are direct, immediate, and easy to see and understand, where the conservative ideals are more difficult to understand because they are, generally indirect and occur over a period of time. (Not to mention that they involve the un-popular ideas of work and responsibility.)

Of course it is not that the black community is stupid, rather that there is a problem in the communication … part of that problem is that the conservative movement has done a poor job of communicating the benefits of conservative economics, and in part because there are others interfering with that communication. For a generation or so the ‘civil rights leaders’ have told the community ‘don’t worry, we’ll take care of you’ and it’s been all too easy to scare the community with the ‘loss’ of these programs … much as the liberals are now trying to scare the senior citizens with the ‘loss’ of Social Security … but that’s another rant.

Now the communication problem itself is multifaceted … it comes in part from poor education (not just of the black community but of children in general) … education hampered by ‘political correctness’ and grade inflation among other things. We have an education system that, in many cases, no longer requires that a student learn the basic functioning of government … a system that, much like our government, discourages individual achievement … a system that often labels bright, creative, and intelligent students as ‘problems’ and recommends that their parents get drugs prescribed to eliminate the ‘problem’. We have a system that is largely staffed by people who believe and expound the ‘liberal’ agenda … not always the teachers themselves … but the textbook writers and planners … and the administration as well.

Almost every year the burden of the cost of government falls on fewer people … the system relies on the ‘achievers’ of society pulling up everyone else on their shoulders … As this burden gets heavier there are fewer achievers … as some give up, discouraged by the punishment society places on achievement, and others move their wealth out of the country or decide that they have reached a point where they no longer need to achieve and cease to collect ‘income’ at all. At the same time, more and more hungry mouths turn to the government …. If this trend is not reversed, or at least stopped it could itself destroy this country.

A quick note

A coworker of mine handed me this today and I thought I'd share it here real quick.

It was an opinion article from WSJ.com last January written by Pete Du Pont and can be found here.

Death

What is death? Why do we, in America at least, make such a big production of it? In short, why do we dwell on it?

Why do we mourn and carry on … in some cases for weeks or longer … over someone that has died? Certainly it is a loss, and particularly painful when it is the loss of someone that you’ve loved very closely over the years. To be saddened by the loss is understandable … to miss the individual is to be expected … but why do we, on the whole, feel the need to remember the Death more than the Person? Why do so many of us grasp onto that pain and wrap it around ourselves dwelling on the loss rather than the memories of the life?

Does it help the departed love one? Do we feel that in so torturing ourselves that we some how make it easier on them? Do we think it makes them feel better? Do we think that by wrapping ourselves in that pain and loss that we somehow love them more, or remember them better?

Death is a part of life. It is as natural as breathing and it is inevitable for all of us. Those of us left behind to live our lives should not dwell on the Death, but remember with gladness the memories that we have of the loved one. Celebrate their life and cherish their place in yours, but do not dwell on their passing or your loss … for that route … though often ‘romanticized’ … does neither them, nor you, any good.

Certainly this is easier to do when the person dies of natural causes such as age or disease … but those whom we loose to accident, disaster, or to the acts of others, either negligent or malicious, need to be treated the same. The dead are beyond our reach …. The living must continue to live.

Valentine's Day

Well … it’s Valentine’s Day … probably the absolute worst of the ‘made-up’ holidays. To be certain I know that there is some history to the holiday … but it, like so many holidays, ceased to hold any real meaning long ago and became a way to sell cards, flowers, and candy in large quantities.

However, it does serve, if nothing else, as a means of getting us to step back and think about the ones that we love. We don’t love them MORE on that day, or less on any other day, but it reminds us of those that we care about … whose love is sometimes taken for granted.

I myself am blessed to have a wonderful wife; smart, funny, and caring, who shares the same hobbies and interests as I, and who shares many of the same opinions. A wife who supports the man I am and urges me to become better. Through all the years together and all the arguments, misunderstandings, miscommunications, and trials of life, she is still as beautiful and cherished to me as ever she was. And if I could take my knowledge today back in time to the day we met, I’d only marry her sooner if I could.

To my wife – I Love you.

Vacations

As most of you probably already knew or guessed, I was away on vacation last week. As usual I returned not so much refreshed and rejuvenated, but exhausted. To be certain I did have a lot of fun and got to see friends and family that I have not seen in quite a while … it was a ‘good’ vacation. So, why do I feel like I need a vacation after my vacation?

Simple really, I over planned. Since I get so little vacation time I try to do ‘everything’ at once. The result is either I don’t get everything I want to do done (unfulfilled expectations … the number one cause of stress), or I rush and hurry everything not enjoying it nearly as much as I should (Time management worries … IE Stress). Usually it ends up being some combination of both. Once you add in the additional stress and expectations of visiting family, well, in the end a ‘fun’ vacation usually ends up draining energy more than it recharges a person.

I also know that I’m not alone in this feeling; I hear it all the time from friends and co-workers that come back from vacation, and I’d be willing to bet that if most of them analyzed it they would come to much the same realization. In general, Americans at least, tend to put ‘fun’ over ‘rest and relaxation’ or to put it another way … we just try to do too much with the limited time we have.

I tend to believe that this comes from a couple different factors … first, as a society, we tend to value productivity over almost everything. Don’t get me wrong, productivity is certainly important, but more than a few people have taken it above and beyond … to the point that they feel guilty taking a vacation, or, when on vacation, they feel ‘guilty’ if they aren’t doing something … rather than sit back and read a book, or just relax they feel like they have to go ‘do something’. Second is the fact that Americans, on average, get the least amount of vacation time of any country … as a result people try to cram more ‘fun’ into their limited time off, they try to do everything that they don’t have time to do normally.

On the one hand many employers could help themselves and their employees by realizing that workers with 4-6 weeks vacation a year are usually healthier, happier, and more productive overall than those with 3 or less weeks of vacation a year. On the other hand people (myself included) need to remember that it is important to rest and relax on a vacation, plan a few days of ‘nothing’ this will not only give you time to recharge, but it will also help with ‘over planning’ by giving you more flex time and maybe give you that time to really enjoy and savor the company of friends and/or family.

State of the Union

Last night President George W. Bush stood before a join session of the US Congress and delivered his annual State of the Union Address. In my estimation quite likely the best state of the union speech that he has delivered and certainly one of the better ones that I’ve heard.

The President spoke last night of what he intends to try and accomplish in the coming year and in his second and final term as president. However, he made a very important distinction in his speech … he is focusing on the long term stability and growth of this country. We have here a man that is taking the responsible approach to government and doing, not what needs to be done to meet current needs, but what must be done to ensure that those needs are met for generations to come.

Too often our leaders seek only to guide us through the waters of the here and now, with little or no regard to positioning us into calm and steady waters for the future. Too often they only worry about what needs to be done to ensure that they get re-elected in 4 or 6 years, concerned more with maintaining their power than doing what is right for this country and its citizenry.

Do not mistake me here. Both parties share an equal blame in that short coming. Just as most of our problems are the results of short sightedness of both parties. The state of the Social Security system is a prime example of this. It’s not just one party that has been spending the surplus income to the Social Security system … both parties have willingly borrowed that money from the future of the country in order to fund their little projects here and there. ‘Republicans’ are not saints, and ‘Democrats’ are not demons … they are ALL something much worse … they are politicians.

The President spoke at some length about the need for the congress to reform the Social Security system, and provided some landmark dates where certain problems are projected to arise. He did a very good job in explaining WHY we need reform, and why that reform should come sooner (now) rather than later (after the system collapses). The American people heard him and, largely agreed. Polls run just after the State of the Union showed a 10% or more increase in the number of people that agreed with the President that reform was needed and that he had made a convincing case of it … moving the percentage of people that agree with the President into the 60-70+% range … a clear majority of those polled.

He is receiving a lot a ‘flak’ today in that he did not detail a specific reform plan, but it should be remembered that while the President can SUGGEST a plan, it would be just that … a suggestion. Congress has to write the law … ultimately it is THEIR responsibility to come up with a plan. Certainly the President should present them with a plan, but to speak of specifics in the State of the Union would be somewhat irresponsible in that he can’t say “I am going to do this” and then have Congress do something else entirely … the American people would feel lied to and betrayed.

The President also spoke of the need to reform the “archaic, incoherent federal tax code.” Something I’ve already mentioned here that I believe is one of the most important things that need to be done for the future of this country. I have more to say about the specifics of tax code reform but for now I will simply say that I support the Fair Tax Plan (Currently proposed as HR25 and S25 in the House and Senate respectively) as the plan that I feel provides the best tax reform.

Of course he also spoke of the War on Terror on going in Afghanistan and Iraq, honoring the sacrifice of our soldiers and the courage of the Iraqi people. Many of those present showed their support for the President and the Iraqi people by dipping their index finger in purple ink as the Iraqi’s did to ‘sign’ their ballots last Sunday. One of the most touching moments in the televised coverage and for those present was when Safia Taleb al-Suhail, an Iraqi human rights advocate present at the speech who lost her father to Saddam, turned and hugged Janet Norwood who had lost her son, a Marine corporal, in the assault on Fallujah.

The President, however, brought up several points that I disagree with and I did want to take some time to talk about those as well, and explain why I disagree with the policy.

First, the President spoke of the need for the government to make it easier for more Americans to afford college. I don’t believe that is what the country needs … First off you are, in essence, talking about increasing a government spending program, but more than that, I believe that in this country we place too much ‘value’ in a college diploma and too little on apprenticeships and work training programs. Too often colleges do not really prepare people for the ‘real world’ that they are going to have to work in, and the common nature of the diploma ultimately devaluates the degree in the end.

There was a time in this country where anyone could get a job in a mail room and with hard work move up in the company … learning the skills needed through immersion and practical application. Now … if you want to be a mail room or shipping clerk you need at least an associate degree … and the pay rate can’t cover the student loan payments.

No … I don’t think we need to make it easier to pay for college … we need to get back to college is required less. The government needs to get AWAY from the income re-distribution plans, not add to them. We need to strengthen the education so that a High School diploma is a valid starting point and prepares our children to start work.

While I will agree that the government needs to stay out of the realm of teaching morals, I also believe that the government needs to stay out of defining marriage as well. I do not support a constitutional amendment that DENIES people rights. If a religion wishes to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman, then that is the right of the religion, and the government should have no say in the matter. I do not believe that government should prevent the union two adults on the basis of sex.

The right to be joined in a legal union should not be denied to a group of people solely on the basis that they wish to be joined to a member of the same sex. It is discrimination, pure and simple. Now, if religions do not want to ‘wed’ the two individuals due to the beliefs and teachings of the religion, then that is the right of the religion … but the legal status of two individuals should not be dictated by religion.

Basically, if two people … be they man and woman, man and man, or woman and woman … go to the courthouse to be legally joined they should be able to do so. If you want to call what is done at the legal level ‘civil unions’ instead of ‘marriage’, fine do it that way. The legal ‘rights’ of such should be the same in the eyes of the government, courts, and law to ensure that ALL groups have EQUAL protection under the law, and are not discriminated against.

The President also spoke about reform to the outdated and highly ineffective immigration system. I agree that something needs to be done to immigration, I don’t, however, believe that the temporary worker program is the proper answer to the situation. Boarders and immigration are a huge issue though with many levels of complications and no easy answers. I believe, however, that for any serious and meaningful reform in this area can be achieved that the government must work to better secure our borders to better manage illegal immigration.

People have begun to take offense to the term ‘illegal alien’ but, lets face it …. That is EXACTLY what they are. They did not come to the country by legal means and are, therefore here illegally, and they are from a foreign country which makes them aliens … so illegal aliens. Maybe it would be preferable to call them criminal foreigners? I’m sorry … they don’t respect the laws of this country enough to come here through the established legal channels then I don’t CARE if I offend them when I call them illegal aliens.

The problem I perceive with the Temporary Worker program is that it seems to reward those who have entered the country illegally while sticking those who have used the legal channels into an archaic system that is hopelessly backlogged. Meanwhile illegal aliens continue to come to the country and many send money back ‘home’ to take care of their families … money that is siphoned from our economy … money that is earned largely without tax paid on it (also a reason I support the Fair Tax legislation) … by people who often draw from government social programs as well.

Despite my disagreement with some of the President’s plans, I believe that he has an optimistic view for the future. He has set himself and this country on more responsible course trying to steer us into the calmer, safer, waters in the future. Trying to build a stronger country not for us, but for our children, for our future.