You WHAT now!

    I would like to take some time to review and comment on some remarks our ostensibly intelligent President has recently made. These comments were part of his weekly saturday address. There are, in fact, more than a few interesting statements to deal with but I will focus on but a couple.  Early in his comments he talks about the "investments" his administration has made in science and technology that has sparked innovation and lots of jobs. I'm guessing he's including the bankruptcy lawyers for Solyndra in the list of new jobs. And by the way, those investments were made with money from the citizens pockets at large. My only influence over these "investment" decisions comes in the form of my vote during elections which has proven to be rather frustrating of late. The half a billion tax dollars that were invested in Solyndra didn't exactly work out all that well. And if the government subsidies were removed from, lets say, the ethanol world there would likely be more bankruptcies. Just like social security, the money the government "invests" would be more effectively "invested" by those from whom the money was taken. Wind and solar are not an answer to our energy needs and could have found an appropriate and effective place in the big energy picture under the direction of private enterprise. But this would preclude the governments acquistion of power and therefore is not even considered.
    Later in the same address he equated the fact of the Russians sending Sputnik into space with the illusion of AGW. A physical, and rather large piece of metal, engineered for, and delivered to, space is the same as man-made global warming? Seems a bit of a stretch to me. Denying Sputnik is, in every way I can come up with, quite dissimilar from questioning the argument of man-made global warming. I believed from the beginning that Obama was indeed an empty suit waiting for others to fill. Apparently, those who added intelligence to the suit were dreaming, or hoping. Their hopes have been met with an unpleasant reality.

A CALL TO EXCE0TIONALISM

    Odd, I suppose, to address whole nations with a seldom read article. Assuming the readership here, including myself, will still qualify as seldom.But this is my intent today, though if you don't qualify as a country I would still invite you to listen, with your eyes, to my points. Once again, while consuming a meal my mind was overwhelmed trying to understand all the steps, all the people, all the companies involved in bringing me the chance to enjoy my stack of pancakes with a sausage patty. For instance;

    THE WHEAT: the wheat is used in making the pancake batter. Some form of flour that is.

God created wheat:

Man learned how to grow it more and more efficiently so as to make it available to all.

    :irrigation

    :weed control

    :combines

    :tractors

    :genetics

Over time we developed ways of bring it to the masses.

    :trucks

    :trains

    :elevators w/dryers to help preserve it

    :mills and other processing facilities

    :stores (owners, stockers, checkers etc.)

Now, above is a partial treatment, due to time restraints, of just one aspect of my meal. But it you expand this partial list to include the designers, engineers, manufacturers, assemblers, truck drivers, store owners, stockers, checkers, quality control, fuel for harvesting and transporting, and a stove and pan to cook the pancakes in it's incredible. And if you expand this discussion to include the milk and butter, syrup, ketchup, (yes, ketchup), etc. it's absolutely mind boggling.

    These processes are part of what I call collaborative miracles. A partnership between God and man. I believe our country, because of it's Constitution protecting our individual freedoms, has become the most fertile ground for these collaborations to take place. I also believe we are moving away from a government which will allow for the continuation of these processes. These processes unfold over time as people engage in commerce with each other. As someone with a service or product contracts with someone needing that service or product to provide such for an agreed upon item of value. Money or an exchange of other services for instance. This is where the rubber meets the road in defining freedom. Freedom and free market capitalism go together. With a civil society intact, and yes we are loosing that by the day, these interactions result in great advantage for the country as a whole. If there is a catch it is this; we need to understand our createdness. We need to understand that we are all made in God's image and that we have intrinsic value. Without this understanding it all unravels.

    So, Venezuela, Cuba, Nigeria, Russia, listen up. If you want to be exceptional you don't need to become American, you need to become a champion of individual rights and free markets and a respecter of all who live in your country's borders. In time your citizens will make your country truly exceptional. Who knows, maybe at some point you could show us the way back from our current path towards Oligarchy.

Thanks, and have a great day. (That is, if you want too)

GENEROSITY vs SYMPATHY

   

Wanted to explore an idea with you. That is, if you would be kind enough to travel with me for a bit. As we look around this world we live in, it is easy to find those in very difficult, if not utterly desperate, situations. As the internet has matured and spread to many many countries more and more people are exposed to this great need. If I live in Cuba and am a doctor receiving $35 a month I can do little but pray for those in these various hopeless places. If I live in India and make just enough to buy food for one meal a day for my family and me then, again, I am able only to "feel sorry" for the hurting and the hungry around the world. 
    A few days ago I was fixing a problem in a toll booth at one of the Turnpike plazas in my area. While visiting with the collector he mentioned that he was only working part-time and was retired from another job. He went on to say that his son ran an orphanage in Haiti and they didn't have enough money coming in to cover all of their needs.  So this gentleman decided to take on this part-time job which allows him to send more money to his son and the orphans he was trying to help. Another co-worker has spent untold thousands of dollars and thousands of hours setting up medical and teaching facilities in Guatemala. Several people from work went to the Mississippi coast to help clean up and rebuild after Katrina a few years back. I could spend hours talking about people I personally know who spend time and treasure serving others whether here or in other countries. 
    My great fear is that in another 50 years, if we continue down this Progressive road we are on, we will land in a place where our freedoms will not afford us the opportunity to serve others, individually, like we do now. Our movement toward centralized government and the necessary loss of individual freedoms that accompanies such a movement, will leave us with the shared poverty, administered in the name of fairness, that will impede, or stop, our ability to act on our compassion with generosity. On the other hand, it's a lot easier to do nothing, when you haven't the resources to help, which allows for a selfish, and lazy citizenry to be cared for by an all powerful, ostensibly benevolent ruling class. A country full of people living in the government's basement with a lifetime supply of condoms and cannabis. WOW! That's a lot better than having the responsibility of trying to use your resources to help others. 

   " ......Until every nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd."
 Alexis de Tocqueville

FREE MARKET CAPITALISM

 

   Testing, one, two three. Is this thing on?I guess it is, it just seems rather hard to hear compared to the big Megaphones so many others have at their disposal. I feel like I'm living in an alternate universe sometimes. So we point at the rich,(one-percenters), or whatever category you wish to invent, and scream that the love of money is the root of all evil. It's very easy to point at various elements of our society and exclaim how very selfish and uncompassionate we have become. It's equally easy to look at a data set of financial information and conclude that our economic system is wholly unfair and that something sinister must be afoot. Easy, too, is the game of fixing society's ills by using other people's money. Easy, that is, if we have determined that these "other people" have come by their wealth immorally. Otherwise, we might feel like the ones stealing other people's money. It seems to me we are missing some important facts here. Or maybe we are missing an important perspective. When we look at data over time. That is, looking at certain analysis of financial concerns throughout our country, we see trends in data. We miss reality because we are focused on numbers on a page which seem to bring us to similar conclusions from one year to the next. Those stingy top one, or ten percenters just won't go away. And they are getting richer and richer by the day. What the data doesn't show, without going to look for it, is the fact that there is substantial movement from within these different categories of income earners from year to year. It's the same set of 10 digits representing the high earners so we assume it's the same people as well. This is simply not true. There are many people earning more this year than last and many earning less. The exception would be the "super-rich" whose wealth well-insulates them from short-term financial set-backs. If you listen to Dave Ramsey's program when he invites millionaires to call in it's a very educational time indeed. These millionaires have simply made smart decisions and most have built their wealth, over time, on incomes very similar to mine. These middle income jobs may be fading but they are still available and I'm not sure punishing these people's wise decision-making by taxing them more and more is a good, or even ethical, position to take. Our free-market system, when allowed to work, for instance allowing failing businesses to actually fail so that new opportunities can be leveraged and turned into profits for the remaining companies is all part of a healthy economy.
    So the love of money is the root of all evil when someone else is accumulating more of it than I think they should have but my desire to have the government take their money and give it to me is somehow virtuous? I just don't get it.
                                             

 If salvation were a thing that money could buy, the rich would live and the poor would die.

Freedom vs Six Weeks of Vacation

It is taking a while to digest all that is going on in this country right now. Slowly, I would say, the picture is beginning to clear up a bit. Transitioning from a mostly agricultural economy to one based on manufacturing was a difficult but economically prosperous endeavor for the last 60 or 70 years. Still, looking around our country in the midst of an economic crisis, I see plenty of evidence of a comparatively rich society. None in history has accomplished what we have and I would suggest it was, at its heart, due to our Constitutional freedoms. Having said that, our current predicament, (jeepers, I took 3 shots at that spelling and missed all three times), would seem to be a result of our freedom to be greedy. Let me explain a bit. What if there is a challenge to our company's position from another company offering a similar product at a lower cost thereby impacting our company's bottom line. We are fine with a tariff, or new regulation which will put our company, and our personal fortunes, back in front. In other words, we are ok with the million people who buy our widget paying more for it as long as I don't lose my job. Never mind the inherent unfairness of the situation, or the ultimate dis-incentive provided by such action to future businesses. We kept our job and that's what's important. Do we really believe that bailing out GM was a wise move? There are no more cars being built today than if GM had been allowed to fail. The only difference is that the people buying the cars now have the added financial burden of propping up a proven failure, GM. I suppose we will also end up paying all of their health care and retirement costs as well. Where does it stop? The company I worked for for 23 years went through quite a transition over its life. Originally it needed experienced electronics troubleshooters to repair the avionics equipment that they serviced. As time went on, the prevailing method of repair was to replace whole circuit boards which had become fairly cheap with all the advances in circuit board design and manufacture. The company was now in a predicament with a highly skilled, well-paid workforce that was competing with younger companies who could hire less skilled workers for less money and provide a similar level of service to its customers. While this is unfortunate, it is, in fact, capitalism. Bailing out such a company only artificially sustains a segment of the workforce, while burdening the rest of it. It is not, at all, an example of a "Free Market" but rather an example of an artificially skewed market. That is what we have here in the United States now as government has become more and more involved in business. We are destroying the most remarkable system ever encountered in this world and we are inhibiting its ability to adjust and respond to challenges. We are loading its backpack up with more and more rocks as it tries to compete on a global scale. We are prolonging an unsustainable illusion while destroying our ability to excel in the future. We are, in fact, guaranteeing a mediocre future, rather than offering ourselves the chance to continue with our truly exceptional economic system.