Nanny State or I'm Not Giving Up My Teat!

Years ago we owned a small store when you could only buy staple goods with food stamps. The idea was that if you are broke, flour and milk are better purchases than Twinkies and a Coke. Some in government said, “No, we all have to be equal. Folks with food stamps should be able to buy the same things as everyone else.” There are 2 sides to this argument and both are slippery. During our years of owning the store we saw the abuses of the Food Stamp Program. It was truly sad. It was sad to see folks having tough times and sad to see how easy the system could be gamed. People actually sold their food stamps to unscrupulous store owners for cash, literally pennies on the dollar. They wanted the cash and the storekeeper could deposit them at face value. An old proverb states, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

Tragically, many of the people with the stamps had no money management skills which may have added to them being in the program. The longer they were on the program the more immune they became to stretching, even breaking the rules. If you called the state offices for assistance with abuses they would tell you that it was up to the shopkeepers to police the program; they didn't have but 2 agents for the state. Sound familiar. Create a program and then take no responsibility for it nor oversight of it. That said. I don't favor the "dole" though I have been on it myself during hardship. I also don't favor big government or programs that can be easily abused. So then what?

As a kid I stood in "relief lines". They were aid places for people in need. My mom had died and my dad was raising 5 of us with the help of hired housekeepers; when he could find one (Who wants to raise someone else’s five kids?) Anyway, standing in the Relief line was painful for us but even more so for my dad. However a couple of us kids would tag along with him in hopes that someone would toss in an extra pound of butter or something. It is hard to see hungry kids. The attendants of the line almost always tossed in something extra: rightly or wrongly. It was very confusing. We were proud to help and ashamed at the same time; people were supposed to strive to make it on their own. We knew good from bad and right from wrong. Oh well. Right doesn’t seem so important when you are hungry. Seeing that, good, decent, well meaning government employees bestowed extras on us. I guess it was some form of this program that re-emerged as “Food Stamps”. Things are different now.

It seems to me that many if not most Americans have a sense of entitlement now. Who knows why? It just somehow became part of our society like Welfare, Medicaid, ADC, Unemployment, Agricultural Price Support, and to some extent Social Security as well as many others. To be fair most of us have paid for decades into programs with the hope of using the benefits when we retire but “Government Knows Best”. In all their wisdom they have created generations of de facto “wards of the State” whom they will never wean from the teats of the American taxpayer. We all see it and complain about it but I wonder who can or will do anything about it. They won’t say that these programs are broke. There is no money in the program but it is not broke. You can redefine the meaning of any word so that you are not “technically” lying. Remember, “It depends on your definition of what “Is” means.”

When all sides have been heard on this matter it really comes down to the people. What will the people do? What will the people tolerate? What types of entitlements will the people pay for? This all begs to the nature of the modern person. Being one I am amazed by us. We all have a solution but can we pay the price as individuals? America is asking to cut the spending but I wonder what it is that we will willingly give up? Ask the elderly if they will take less of Medicare for the benefit of their grandchildren; then see if you can whip Granny ‘cause the fight is on.

Truth in Government?

To lie, to tell an untruth, BS, be untruthful, bear false witness, beguile, break promise, bull, con, concoct, deceive, delude, dissemble, dissimulate, distort, dupe, equivocate, exaggerate, fabricate, fake, falsify, fib, forswear, frame, fudge, go back on, invent, make believe, malign, misguide, misinform, mis-instruct, mislead, misrepresent, misspeak, misstate, overdraw, palter, perjure, pervert, prevaricate, promote, put on, put up a front, snow, soft-soap, string along, victimize, beguile, betray, bunco, con, counterfeit, defraud, delude, double-cross, fake out, fake, feign, fool, humbug, illude, jive, juggle, mislead, pretend, psych out, put on, sham, shuck, simulate, snow, take in, trick, etc…

Say what you will. Only the truth adds up to the truth no matter how you "Spin" it.

Cat or Pigeon? Which are you?

Years ago I learned of the “Law of Successive Approximation”. Don’t run off. This will be a fun article. I promise. It a nutshell this concept or “Law” is where you want to present a “Big Idea” that may be beyond the ability of others to accept. So, you break it down into small or even baby steps.

Now, anyone who has ever dated knows that a first date doesn’t begin with hand holding and kissing. For that matter it may not end there. But if it is ever to get there the “Idea” has to become comfortable in the minds of both daters. Usually the male begins with casual movements that allow him to get ever closer to the female. He may take her hand to help her from the car and perhaps there is a dance or two. Often hands become tangled and faces become closer and possibly that first kiss. I’m blushing. Anyway you get the idea.

Using this real life experience it is easy to understand that big leaps are often best taken with small steps. You know this and apply this in your everyday life. Sometimes it is harder to see when it occurs very, very, slowly. Political correctness is that way. It started off being a concept of being more in tune with sensitivities and now it seems that has evolved into a school of mind control. Surely you have found yourself thinking something that wasn’t politically correct and pondered whether there was something wrong for you to think this way. Sensitivity is nice. Sameness is absurd.

I am who I am and am more than the accumulation of a few thoughts. I am complex and have my life experiences and ideology to guide me; not to mention whatever effect genetics may or may not have on me. I can be sensitive without thinking like anyone: you or anyone else. (Did you ever notice that you can’t find “who” determines the rules of PC?) So I find that I can be sensitive to your thinking and still think that you are absolutely wrong. You too have that same right. Yet, someone, (the “they”) said you are wrong to think a certain something. You are even more evil if you say it. Now Elton John can say Jesus was a Homosexual but I’m not to speak out against EJ and his ideology because it would be gay bashing. I don’t hate gays. I just want them to shut up already. It is not all about gays. Now I will be labeled a “Homophobe”. Thirty years ago there wouldn’t have been any consequence for my opinion. See the “Law of Successive Approximation” at work here?

A lie used to be a “LIE”. Now it is called spin. The “War on Terror” is now a “Man Made Contingency Operation” and “Socialism is Liberalism or Progressivism”. What in the heck is going on? If you call a shooting a “high velocity projectile encounter” will the victim still be dead?

As a boy I remember my dad saying that we were becoming a nation of “educated fools”. As I consider the fact that the President, Congress, and many Americans no longer think the truth matters and that honesty is relative to the outcome, I find my dad words truer than I could have imagined. What can restore us to our sensibilities and make “right” and “wrong” real again? What can return us to “America: Land of Opportunity” thinking where you can work hard and improve things for your family? Who can put “Dignity” back into government and raise up Statesmen?

Perhaps if we make it Politically Correct to be Honest, Hardworking, and Truthful we might get it done. See you at the Polls.

PS. In the meantime, it is not wrong to speak up it is just politically incorrect.

Obama: Calculating and Controlling

All of us have known someone who is a “Control Freak” and it may be we ourselves. Those who are the Controllers are under the impression that their ideas, methods, and procedures are the best way for things to be seen, done, or avoided. For those who are associated with these controllers, all their time is spent anticipating or being frustrated by the lack of freedom Controllers cause. Whether intended or not, it is extremely unpleasant to want to exercise a personal freedom, an opinion or an idea only to have it squashed by the nay saying of the controller. Even the control freaks freak-out when their ideas are challenged.

I think it would be fair to say that all of us want to control things to some degree dependent upon the situation. It is probably fair to say that we gravitate toward people who allow that freedom and avoid people who wish to control us. To the casual observer the people we choose to associate with or not to associate with may not be all that obvious. This brings me to the point of my article and that is the current style of the Government under Obama is toward control.

Anita Dunn was the White House communications chief until she stepped down on November 10th. In a famous video Anita talked about the Obama machine’s methods to “control the media.” She states:

"So it was very much we controlled it, as opposed to the press controlled it. And it did not always make us popular with the press. But we increasingly by the general election very rarely did we communicate through the press anything that we didn't absolutely control.”

Now aside from her Maoist infatuation she tells us what the Obama administration was and is all about: control. This seems particularly specific to information and Anita and the White House became embroiled in a dispute about Fox News’s rights and legitimacy as a news organization. It appears that since Fox News couldn’t be controlled they had to be castigated.

There is an old saying about how a business gets and keeps its customers. “How you get them is how you keep them.” I think it an apt proverb for what we see as the tactics of this administration. Normally it is used to reflect upon service or quality. If you get your customers by good service you will keep them the same way. Not only is this the way to achieve your past results but to guarantee your future as well. So, if the Obama approach to winning America’s voters was to control the information they receive it is likely that they will continue to do the same. Actually, everything points toward this very thing.

Recently the Democratic Party of congress has gone toward this very same tactic of controlling information by holding secret meetings and locking meeting rooms to all but the chosen few. Even Nancy Pelosi’s recent press conference on Healthcare Reform was an “Invitations Only” event. Republican staffers were expressly excluded yet the guest list included scores of SEIU and Acorn members. Harry Reid went behind closed doors and refused to let the “other side of the aisle” into committee. All of this brings us to a very serious question. What is wrong with truth that would hurt us?

As recently as this morning, Obama has exhorted that Congress should not investigate the “Fort Hood Shootings”. He claims that it is too soon. Too soon for what? For whom? What harm could possibly come from investigating what transpired to allow 13 Americans to die and 30 injured. As an aside that 13 dead doesn’t include the unborn child that that murdered woman was carrying. No one has yet had the courage to call that murder. Ask the expectant father if when his wife was killed did he lose just a wife or a son or daughter as well. A brief Internet search revealed that 4 high profile murders where a mother and unborn child were killed resulted in 2 charges of murder and not one. Why not at Fort Hood? I could only speculate what Obama told Gates to tell the Generals at fort hood.

Someone very famous once said, “You shall know the truth and the truth will make you free.” They are so profound that they are engraved on the U.S. Supreme Court building in D.C. and they come from the one that so many would deny the right to worship him: Jesus.
So I guess you could say that when it comes to “O” I tend to think he is a little freaky…a super freak…when it comes to controlling. As for me I would find someone else’s company more refreshing.

So Who's Responsible?

Responsibility can be a difficult thing such as when it means doing the right thing and the right this is hard to do. I have found that the “right thing to do” is almost always “the hardest thing to do”. Actually, I have never found an exception in my life but I like to say it that way to leave some wiggle room. Now it is true that one can argue the semantics of right vs. wrong. I use it in a more simplified way such as to tell the truth or not tell the truth.

As I wrote the other day, Van Jones, the Green Jobs Czar had called the republicans a**holes back in February. Later he gets confronted with this his comments and he makes an apology. Okay so let’s say that we accept the apology and that he has now decided that they are not a**holes. Is he still a Marxist and a racist who believes that “White People” are the great polluters and that he can use “Green” as a means to free the “black man”? At this point some will hold this man responsible for his actions, opinions, and speeches. Others will say he is changed. I will say that he has said and done things that he must now be held responsible for. He should be fired: end of story.

However, this and other administrations have not valued personal responsibility. As a result, government official can say, do, or not do without any consequences. Charlie Rangel, D-NY has misreported his earnings, underpaid his taxes, and has usurped his power to illegally create a penthouse apartment in a rent controlled building. He doesn’t even profess to be sorry and appears to be going unpunished. He is the Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. Judas appears to be in charge of the money again.

On the other hand, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner owed back taxes. When audited by the IRS in 2006 he was found lacking for 2003 and 2004 and he had to fess up and pay up. However, he did not pay the $25,000.00 for 2001 and 2002 until he was appointed by Obama, a full 2 years later. And so what is he in charge of? Our Money!

The list doesn’t end here. These are just 2 of the dozens of investigation into current government officials. These people lack personal responsibility. Moreover, we Americans don’t demand personal responsibility. We all have our thresholds of right and wrong. Stealing is not stealing if it is only a small item but becomes stealing when it becomes a large item. Define large? Herein lays the problem.

I am guilty as the rest and I am admitting it. I do not hold myself to the level of responsibility to which I was raised and educated to do. I am partly at fault for the corruption in Washington. I am guilty of lying which makes excusing liars easier, and on, and on, and on. I am committed to raise the level of my integrity and to demand the same of those who serve me. No longer can we tolerate sloth and greed in government. Be advised Congress. I am sure I speak for others when I say “We are putting you on notice” and that we will hold you RESPONSIBLE.

UPDATE 06/06/2009
Van Jones has resigned:

"I am resigning my post at the Council on Environmental Quality, effective today.

On the eve of historic fights for health care and clean energy, opponents of reform have mounted a vicious smear campaign against me. They are using lies and distortions to distract and divide.

I have been inundated with calls - from across the political spectrum - urging me to "stay and fight."

But I came here to fight for others, not for myself. I cannot in good conscience ask my colleagues to expend precious time and energy defending or explaining my past. We need all hands on deck, fighting for the future.

It has been a great honor to serve my country and my President in this capacity. I thank everyone who has offered support and encouragement. I am proud to have been able to make a contribution to the clean energy future. I will continue to do so, in the months and years ahead."

Whether this relieves the Administration for their responsibility in appointing such Czars and circumventing the Constitution remains to be seen.

Is it cynical in here or is it just me?

Once upon a time in a land not too far away you could pretty much trust most anything that was told to you. People actually preferred trust and pleasantries and found disdain in the opposite. I can hear mom saying to me that if I had nothing nice to say about someone then I should say nothing at all. Mom is not alive these days and I am thinking even she might find herself speechless if she were.

Back when, people took great pride in what they said and many a deal was made with only the spoken word and a handshake to seal it. Phrases like “my word is good” and “he is good for it” and “I’ll be right back” were taken at face value: nothing more, nothing less. I think things began to change about the time my uncle Louey went out for a quart of milk and wasn’t heard from for 20 years.

It was about then that President Nixon was elected and within a few years we began to really learn how not to trust people. To be sure, politicians’ words were taken with equal measures of cynicism and hope, with hope being the operative word in casual conversation. Still it is my firm impression that former president Nixon could be credited with the blooming of the modern age of skepticism.

Well of course Nixon appointed Ford as VP who then pardoned Nixon, and then Jimmy came along with that peculiar family of his. Although I don’t think folks thought Jimmy didn’t mean well. I think they just thought him unable to deliver. Ronald Regan seemed honest enough and just about the time folks began to trust again we heard things like “read my lips” and “I never had sexual relations with that woman”. Of late I have heard “change you can believe in”.

It seems that it is not enough to just play fast and loose with the truth but it has become some sort of art form to see whom you can shame with your word. Whole careers are made for people to come up with clever ways to say things. They call it spin. Mom would have called it something else and would’ve washed their mouths out with soap.