The garbage truck stopped by

I received a whole heap of materials the other day from Senator Chuck Schumer of New York. Right away I get nervous. What the hell is a Senator from New York doing writing to a guy from Massachusetts? It just didn’t seem right but…what the hell.

Schumer’s first mistake was…well, the very first mistake was sending me this mish-mosh, but other than that, his first mistake was in his salutation; “Dear fellow Democrat.” See, right off the bat, he’s proving he doesn’t know his ass from his elbow. I’m not now nor have I ever considered myself to belong to one or another of the political parties we claim to have in the United States. If he ever learned that I’d voted for Eisenhower, he’d absolutely crap his pants!

The good Senator – although I’m having some second thoughts about that adjective, or is it an adverb; ah, who cares – but the Senator opens with, “Here’s the hard truth: Republicans think they’ve got us right where they want us.”  What the hell is this? Are we playing some kind of sports game here? “They’ve got us where they want us?” What does this mean? Are we so diametrically opposed to whatever it is the Republicans that someone is keeping score?  I thought you were part of a 100-person team enacting laws to help all Americans. Instead, it’s a battle between the Democrats and the Republicans. Wake up Charlie. This isn’t us against them. This isn’t the Senate v. the House. This isn’t Congress against the President. It’s not anybody against anybody.

“They think they can force us to cut Social Security agree to Rep. Paul Ryan’s tax cuts for the rich, and dismantle health care reform, piece by piece. They think they can run out the clock on the Obama presidency and stop us from making progress for the middle class.” Hold on there Chuckles; Do you honestly believe that anyone in his or her right mind is going to go along with Representative Ryan’s tax cuts? If you or your colleagues are that stupid, maybe it’s time to put someone in your seat who has a bit of good old common horse sense. As for the health care plan that has been passed, it’s not perfect; you know it and so do I. It’s a beginning and needs constant reexamination “in order to establish a more perfect plan.” If those words are strange to you, go back and check the Constitution. .

“I don’t have any intention to let [sic] the GOP push us around. But it’s not up to me. It’s up to you.” So if you get pushed around by the Republicans, it’s not your fault; it’s mine? Is that what you’re telling me? Are you abrogating your responsibilities as a United States Senator and trying to pass the blame for your failure on every citizen to whom you sent this bullshit. You goddamned coward; you think by getting me to give you a buck or two, you’ll suddenly solve all of your problems? I wanna smoke what you’re smokin’ because it’s gotta be some really good stuff!

“Republicans have proven time and time again that, when it comes to their dangerous plan to destroy the economic security of the middle class, they won’t listen to reason. We have plenty of good arguments of change. What we need are more sensible Democrats in the Senate who will actually work to enact change.” Ah, Charley, I hate to tell you this, but you have a majority in the Senate. Have you considered the possibility that the Republicans in the Senate and the Democrats in the Senate are just a bunch of fools who put themselves and their parties first rather than putting their constituents ahead of all of their pettiness? I love this next one: “You’d think Republicans would look at the 2012 elections and realize that the American people ain’t buying the old, broken ideas they’re selling.”  I don’t know who wrote this for you, but I hope he or she is currently collecting unemployment. You may believe you’re being folksy by using “ain’t,” but give people more credit, please.

This four-page letter continued in this same vein; the Republicans are going to run us over; cut Social Security and Medicare; eliminate teaching positions so that our children will not be properly educated. They’re going to let the rich get richer and there will eventually be no middle class. Let me share a news flash with the good Senator…There hasn’t been a middle class in this country for over a decade. There are the super rich; the rich; the upper lower class; and the lower class. There are seniors who have to choose between food or medication. If they try to have both, they generally get caught shoplifting what they want for dinner that night.

It’s you, Senator, who is to blame for the position we find ourselves in right now. You’re absolutely right; you have, as you say in your letter, been around while, and you have won a lot of fights. It you’re feeling too old or too tired to fight anymore, find a young turk in New York who’s ready to pick up your banner. Take the millions you’ve made in the Senate and retire somewhere to an island where you can relax and not have to worry about this nonsense. I’m old; I won’t be around for the next 40 years – 35 maybe, but not 40. There are too many people just like you who want to pick the pockets of the people you’ve already reduced to a lower living standard.  How much of your personal fortune have you and the other millionaires on the Democratic side of the aisle committed in your fight against the “Republican Menace?”

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Call out the militia!

If we didn’t know or were unsure of what’s important in the United States Congress, we were given the most concrete example possible this week when Congress defeated gun control legislation that had been put together in a bi-partisan effort. Four Democratic Senators chose politics over common sense and preservation over losing their chances of reelection.

I suppose it’s wrong to cast blame on Senators from states with a large number of small rural populations, where guns are more of a necessity than a ‘pleasure’ item; after all, one can’t eat ‘road kill’ every night. Nonetheless, this vote showed that the United States is not being run by those elected to do so but by a group of fanatics who are able buy elections in much the same way Carnegie, Mellon, Rockefeller, and Ford did in the early part of the 20^th Century. Oops, only the names have changed but it appears that big business or big lobbies can still put their stamp on who represents the ‘country’ in the nation’s capitol.

As I have said on previous occasions, I am an ardent supporter of the Second Amendment…” A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” That being the case, why don’t we eliminate the Army and just call up those who have that “right to bear arms” and send them to the faraway places to become cannon fodder. We could then consider them our “well regulated Militia” and bring a new concept regarding how the second amendment is being interpreted. One could easily make the case that by bearing arms, you are part of a “well-regulated Militia,” and as such, you and your weapons are subject to regular inspection and because you are Militia – not National Guard or Reserve – you are subject by the Constitution to bear those arms at the whim and fancy of the Commander in Chief.

There is one distinct reason why some folks who keep arms should have them. People who ‘need’ guns are those who hunt for food for their tables. People who have guns for “protection of life and property” have a bit of a paranoia problem. If I lived in a ‘dangerous’ part of a city would I own a gun? Yes, I probably would. Back “in the day,” I qualified as a marksman with the M-1 rifle. I also qualified with the M-1 carbine (a useless weapon) and the .45 cal. Pistol, a weapon that, no matter where you hit, would take down a human being. However, I see no need to keep weapons in my home. If anyone can give me a good reason why I should have a gun in my house, I really would like to hear it.

“Guns don’t kill people; people kill people.” That’s wrong. If the people didn’t have the guns, they wouldn’t use them to kill people. You want to kill someone, beat him to death with your fists; hell, if you don’t know how to do it, you can always ask a Utah soccer player. Work in close with a knife if you want to kill someone. That way, you have to look in his eyes as he’s dying. But a gun can be fired from some distance. All you have to do is watch the body drop. It’s impersonal and, if the other person isn’t armed, it’s cowardly. Facing a loaded gun, looking at the business end of the barrel is not a pleasant experience; been there, done that…three times; don’t care to do it again. When an out-of-control kid presses a double barreled shotgun to your head and screams, “Bishop, I’m gonna blow your fucking head off,” you would be absolutely amazed what goes through your mind…and I’m not talking about, “Gee, I’m glad I’m wearing clean underwear!”

Congress, I fear, doesn’t understand what 90 percent of the population wants to do. Conduct background checks on people who are buying guns isn’t a bad idea and it most certainly is not the first step on the road for the Federal Government to confiscate your weapons. No question, there are some very bright men and women in Congress. They are also cowards. Every single Congressman or woman who voted “No” on gun control put themselves ahead of their constituents. It is my sincere hope that they will be turned out of office when next they come due.

I can only sit and wonder what will happen the next time some fool with a gun decides to wipe out an entire elementary school classroom. The record right now is 20 young children. If you don’t believe there is someone, somewhere in the United States who isn’t thinking about how he or she can break that record, you have your head in the sand. Yes, it’s a horrible thing to consider; it’s incomprehensible that there are people who think that way. Unfortunately, those people exist and we have no clues about identifying them. We finally woke up to the fact that bullying exists. No longer is it “boys will be boys,” although there are still too many parents and teachers who excuse it that way. We finally accepted the fact that domestic violence is a crime and not something that is just a family argument. One of these days we may even begin to recognize that a restraining order is no protection against a knife or a bullet or a baseball bat. Until judges learn to do more than slap the wrists of domestic violence offenders, however, we will have to read about more deaths.

We may consider ourselves to be the most civilized nation in the world. It’s too bad that violence in all its ugly forms belies what we claim. We maintain that no country other than China has a larger population; that citizens in countries such as Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, and Korea, just to name a few are all happier than we are. Why is that do you suppose? Could it be that they don’t have the violence we have? Could it be there schools are better than ours? Could it be that their system of health care is far superior to ours? Could it be that they have learned not to take themselves quite as seriously as Americans do? I don’t have a clue, but it seems that we must really have a burr under our saddles if we can’t pass some legislation that would tighten up on gun control. What do you think?

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Congress embarrassed…again

The manner in which war is conducted today is certainly a far cry from America’s first encounters. Standing up, looking straight at your enemy from 20 yards or less was, I guess, fine in Colonial days. My only two hopes as a soldier would have been, first, that the man at whom I was aiming was the one who was aiming at me and second that I was a better, more accurate, and quicker shot than he. Staring at one another across Lexington Green had to be terrifying. I’d like to think that we “Colonials” were a quick study because of our guerilla tactics at Concord, but the Civil War proved we hadn’t really learned one damned thing…well, we do shoot at each other from greater distances for the most part but there were still those lines of soldiers facing one another.

When WWI rolled around armies fought each other from trenches; no more of that macho nonsense where no one stood a chance in hell of enduring withering fire across an open field. Of course weapons and weapon accuracy had also improved. In addition, a more use of tactics, strategy, and common sense also entered the fray. WWII was an entirely different ball game. From cleaning out caves with flamethrowers on several Pacific islands to hedgerow fighting to long distance cannons, to the introduction of the atom bomb, war reached a pinnacle that no one ever wanted to see again.

While Korea had some elements of both the Revolutionary War and nearly every war that followed, all sides recognized the stupidity of using atomic or, by then, nuclear weapons. None of that matters when you understand that more than 54,000 Americans lost their lives and nearly 105,000 were wounded. In retrospect, fear of creeping Communism dominating the Pacific Rim and eventually all of Europe now seems somewhat fallacious, but that was then and this is now.

When we – America, that is – went to war in Vietnam, we learned bitter lessons. I believe, and it most certainly a personal view, that the strategy and tactics used by the Japanese in WWII were a preview of the ways in which future wars would be fought. The Japanese were considered “sneaky” by the manner in which many battles or non-battles were fought. It was jungle fighting and I’m not all that certain we learned our lessons all that well. Vietnam was a nightmare, particularly for the nearly 60,000 who died in the conflict.

Today, there has been further improvement in weaponry. Strategy and tactics have changed in the wars that we fight, now in the Middle East. This is a new military; while its mission – defend the USA from all enemies, foreign and domestic – remains the same, the manner in which we approach that mission is far different from the times when we were a young group of Colonists attempt to create a nation of our own. It’s different from those days when Abraham Lincoln would walk into battle zones and change commanders for whatever reasons he had. Oh, wait a minute, Lincoln was the President; he was the political leader of a ‘party.’ While he was an excellent tactician and strategist, historians recall that he received great criticism for some of his military decisions.

Our military in the 21^st Century consists of highly educated, militarily adept leaders. Yes, no question that there is politics within the military, but that’s where it remains. It has nothing to do with how soldiers – using that as a generic term for all members of the military – are trained or equipped. Soldiers and their commanders know what equipment they need when they are in battle. For instance, Humvees that couldn’t stop a BB were not very good; we learned that in the Iraqi war. Equipment that was susceptible to sand jamming or making it unusable was also not too damned good either. These were military problems, to be solved by military leaders without political interference.

Today, we have Congress trying to tell the military what it can have. Let me quote: “Lawmakers from both parties have devoted nearly half a billion dollars in taxpayer money over the past two years to build an improved version of the 70 ton Abrams [tank].”

“It’s the inverse of the federal budget world these days, in which automatic spending cuts are leaving sought-after pet programs struggling or unpaid altogether. Republicans and Democrats for years have fought so bitterly that lawmaking in Washington ground to a near-halt”  Well, you can’t say that’s altogether true. After all, when the Congress men and women needed to get home for a nine-day vacation – and don’t bullshit with me that it wasn’t a vacation – the wrote and passed a bill in one day that would eliminate delays at airports so they could get themselves away from Washington.

Anyway, “…in the case of the Abrams tank, there’s a bipartisan push to spend an extra $436 million on a weapon the experts explicitly say is not needed.

“‘If we had our choice we would use the money in a different way,’ Gen. Ray Odierno, the Army’s Chief of Staff, told the Associated Press this past week.”

Now, I don’t know about you, but if the Army Chief of Staff admits he doesn’t need a weapon and wants to use the money differently, I’d accept what he said, because I’m not in his position, and he damn well knows better than I what he needs. Gee, if Congress was willing to let the FAA divert $25 million so the air controllers get back to work, why can’t they let the Army divert the money to something they can really use?  The answer is quite simple and it’s spelled P-O-L-I-T-I-C-S. It is politically expedient that the Abrams tank continue to be built because it provides 700 jobs for the people in Lima, Ohio. In addition, two of the biggest critics of the federal deficit, Rep. Jim Jordan and Sen. Rob Portman, probably wouldn’t get elected again since the plant in Lima is also in Jordan’s district in Ohio and Portman is the junior Senator from Ohio.

I will grant that closing a weapons-producing plant in Ohio will cost jobs; I’m also aware that we live in a time when retooling and restructuring of facilities is so much less complicated than it has been in the past. Just because the plant wouldn’t produce tanks any longer doesn’t mean that it cannot produce something equally in demand. No, this is a case where a couple of politicians and their supporters got caught with their hands in the pork barrel and the pork bit back.

This is merely another example of the Congressional lunacy the American citizenry faces today. I’d like to believe that it’s a rare occurrence, but you and I both know better. Until we can make some major changes in our lawmaking branch of government, critical action for the survival of the nation will not happen.

Vote out the 112^th Congress of the United States of America!

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Shame on Us

According to a report prepared by the Office of Management and Budget, “In August 2011, bipartisan majorities in both the House and Senate voted for the threat of sequestration as a mechanism to force Congress to act on further deficit reduction. The specter of harmful across-the-board cuts to defense and nondefense programs was intended to drive both sides to compromise. Congress can and should take action to avoid it by passing a comprehensive and balanced deficit reduction package.”

The President and Congress could not agree on budget cuts. Obama sent two budges to the hill which would reduce our budget deficit by $4 trillion. Congress, as woefully ineffectual as it has been over the past half decade, would not budge and would not submit a budget acceptable to the President. Ergo, sequestration and its cuts has occurred.

Congress, in a race to get home for a one-week recess – see how much power these idiots wield – and noting that the sequestration meant fewer air traffic controllers – not to mention the fact that House Speaker Boehner’s flight was delayed by an hour and a half…oh, heaven forbid – managed to pass in one day, one fucking day, a bill that would allow the FAA to transfer $25 million from its building and improvement fund to hire back the controllers “to eliminate the long lines and cancellations of flights.” You bet your ass they did it in one day; those boys and girls had to get home; they didn’t want to wait in line. More than that, they wanted to blame the long lines and cancellations on the President.  At least he had the good sense to send budgets to the Hill. Is it his fault if Congress chose not to accept them, modify them, sit down with him. Oh, yes, Speaker Boehner sat down but he wasn’t really in a position to negotiate with the President. If Republican Congressman Boehner had come to a compromise with Democratic President Barack Obama, (a) he would have lost his speakership in the House, and (b) probably would have received zero support from the Republican Nation Committee when his next election came around, and (c) would have been replaced by a member of the ultra-conservative Tea Party, thus ensuring that anything the President desired in terms of legislation would never, under any circumstances ever find its way out of the House of Representatives.

“House of Representatives” is a Washington joke. They don’t represent anyone but themselves. As quick as they were to pass a bill that would allow them to get home quicker, they did nothing, absolutely nothing about the 30,000 teacher positions that are due to be cut. They did nothing about the reduction in the meals on wheels programs for seniors that are going to be cut. The FBI, Border Patrol, correctional officers, and other law enforcement officials will still be cut. The Department of Agriculture will not be able to inspect meat processing plants to ensure the guidelines are being followed and food and airborne illnesses are not being transmitted, thus affecting the safety of consumers.

But in one day, one single stinking day, those bastards passed a bill that allows them to get home on time. They don’t represent you and they don’t represent me. THEY REPRESENT THE 435 MEMBERS OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES AND THE 100 MEMBERS OF THE SENATE! If there ever was a more clique with any greater power, it would have to be the NRA. After all, they purchased Congress a long time ago.

You may be saying to yourself that there’s nothing you can do. Well I say you’re wrong. I say that if your Congressman/woman or Senator voted for this one-day bill, he and she showed their true colors. They are not red, white, and blue. Their color is green, money green! Oh sure, they may pass some puissant legislation that is so minor as to affect part of their district, but it doesn’t affect America. They are incapable of passing legislation that helps the country…totally incapable. They bitch and wail about how great the deficit is and how they don’t want to pass that on to ‘their’ – oh yeah and ‘your’ – grandchildren. It’s a little too late to be worrying about that shit when we have a whole pile of worries just to keep out country on an even keel. We’ve been a debtor nation for over half a century. Does anyone truly believe we’ll ever get that debt under control? We won’t; we can’t. It’s not going to happen. This should not be the major priority of our lawmakers. They should be concentrating on how we can better educate our kids; how we can provide more protection for our citizens; how we can strengthen our medical research programs to wipe out disease; how we can repair a broken Social Security system as well as Medicare and Medicaid. Your vote will count only if it is cast to eliminate those people in Congress who have shown their true colors. We elected them and by making telephone calls, by harassing them about issues that are meaningful to you, by working for fresh faces with new ideas and yes, by throwing the Tea Party out of Congress, we can possibly get Congressmen and women who are interested in representing us, the American people.

There’s an old cliché that goes, “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me;” There are members of Congress who have been fooling their constituents for decades and guess what, we who put them in office should be ashamed of ourselves.

 

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Working vs. working

“This project has to be done today!”

“Can you come in this weekend?”

“How are we ever going to catch up?”

“We have to work smarter, not harder, so let’s go!”

“I can’t afford to hire new people so we’ll just have to pick up the pace!”

“If you can’t get it done, there are plenty of people looking for work!”

Does any of  that sound familiar? How about this:

“Take time to smell the roses.”

“Don’t kill yourself.”

“You have to make time to exercise.”

“It’s nice just to be able to relax.”

“I can hardly wait to retire so that I can do the things I want to do.”

If you’re still of working age or even if you’re beyond 65 and still working, you’ve undoubtedly heard or said all of the above at one time or another. Which is the more appropriate? Do you drive yourself or others so hard that someone has already had a heart attack…”I don’t get heart attacks; I give them,” I once heard an office manager say. Frankly, that’s just plain wrong. Management by fear is a horrible way to manage. It remains me of slavery or indenture, neither of which ever really worked out to well.

It rankles me when I see people at the gym speeding through their workouts, looking at their watches or the clocks on the wall. Taking care of yourself is so much more important than constantly wondering if you’re going to make it to work on time.

I can say these things now; I really can…in large measure, I can say them today because I never reminded myself of their importance when I was working. Everything was the job, the job, the job, and what did it get me? I now have five stents in my heart and one in my abdomen. I have asthma, emphysema, and COPD…all because I didn’t take the advice that the older, wiser, more experienced people were offering.

There is no question that working and making money is important. You have to feed yourself and, if you’re married, have kids, maybe a mortgage or a car loan. Maybe you’re doing something that you really love and you’re willing to drive yourself, sometimes to the point of doming home one day and learning that Johnny or Mary is going to be graduating from high school this year, and you don’t even remember when they began high school. If something similar has ever happened to you, you don’t have a spouse or a family. They’ve been replaced. The job is your spouse; your colleagues are your family; what you accomplish in your job takes the place of achievements of your own children.

A friend of mine was the managing director of a major US corporation in London when his kids were growing up. To this day, those no-longer-children swear he attended every soccer and basketball game they played.  His solution was to mark his calendar with every one of his children’s games and to try his damndest to get to them. He insists that he didn’t attend all but because he gave it his best effort, he was able to attend just over fifty percent. Granted, he was in a position to do that. He was also in the position of understand when any of his employees wanted to watch their own children. By having that understanding, his employees were more willing to work harder for him. When he became President of the institution where I was working, we pretty much agreed that we had never worked harder, but we had never had more fun doing it.

We worker bees have three major desires: (1) We want to know that what we do is appreciated by those “in command,” so to speak; (2) We want to feel that we are making a contribution to the success of the overall enterprise, and (3) We want to be compensated fairly for our efforts. These are put in that order for a reason. Survey after survey after survey has shown that money is not the top priority in job satisfaction. Is it important? You better your bottom dollar it is! Is it the most important thing for the majority of people? No, it really isn’t.  People have a desire to be appreciated for their contribution, whether it’s ensuring that the right chocolates go in the right box or the windshield goes in properly along the assembly line, workers want to be told that they are appreciated and that their contribution in meaningful. They may never tell you how important it is to hear someone say, “Hey, great job,” but their gut feels good when they hear it.

Juli, my partner, recently sought out a manager at Walmart. The manager seemed shocked when she told him what a great job one of his employees did in making certain she was satisfied. We all tend to complain when something goes wrong, whether by publicly announcing our displeasure, or just being pissed when we leave a store. What about the other side of that coin? What about when an employee goes out of his or her way to make us happy with our shopping experience? If we report them when they screw up, do we report them when they’ve given that little extra on our behalf?

When a member of the faculty tells me that without the faculty the school would close, my retort is that faculty are just as replaceable as anyone else. I usually follow up with some crack about getting by when your office doesn’t get cleaned for a month or so. In other words, we are all dependent on the efforts of others and we should all appreciate what others contribute to making our lives easier.

Who are you going to thank today?

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Lying…what a bitch!

People lied to me today. They were supposed to pick up an old refrigerator as part of an energy-saving program…and they didn’t. I believe I know why they lied; it was raining, and who wants to be out in the rain, lugging a heavy old refrigerator up stairs and out into the rain; then have to be concerned about loading it onto a slippery ramp or whatever. You see, the reasons – or possible reasons – I can understand. It’s the fact that they lied to me and expect me to believe their lies that irritates me. Granted, I may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer or the brightest bulb on Broadway, but it wasn’t yesterday’s turnip truck from which I fell…how’s that for combining a whole bunch of clichés in one sentence, eh?  The first excuse was that the GPS was wrong and they couldn’t find the house.

“Why didn’t they call?” I asked

“They tell me that they tried to call twice and there was no answer,” I was told.

“What number were they calling?”

“Oh, no; wait a minute. They said that they didn’t have a telephone number to call.”

The truth of the matter is that they had two telephone numbers to call; primary and secondary numbers were requested when they called us to set up an appointment. Both phones were charged and turned on in anticipation that a telephone call might be necessary.

The problem with lying is that one has to keep one’s lies straight. To use an expression you will hear uttered often by members of this household, “Don’t pee on my leg and tell me it’s raining.” I really don’t care that you lie to me; the truth usually comes out somewhere down the road. If you wish to lie to me, at least be able to give it some form of credibility. Hell, I would have believed, “The truck was full and we didn’t have space.” At least that one is plausible, but no, the drivers lied to the dispatcher and then the dispatcher compounded it with more lies.  I might have even accepted, “The dog ate our tires just before we were going to your house.” Not likely but better than what was actually said.

I decided to do a bit – and it was just that, “a bit” – of research regarding the reasons that people lie.  Author Jenna McCarthy maintains that there are basically six reasons why people lie:

(1) To save face: “They said they called twice;” “Oh, wait a minute; they said they didn’t have a number to call.” The whole point here was more to cover the ass of the drivers. While it’s not important to the dispatcher, it just means that I will never believe another word that I’m told by these people…sad, isn’t it?

(2) Lying to shift blame: “Gee, I don’t have the authority to make that decision; my manager would have to do that.” Then why the hell am I even dealing with you. Refusing to take responsibility, in the long run, means that no one will give you any responsibility, ergo, you’re not only dispensable, but the sooner the better.

(3) Lying to avoid confrontation: In almost every aspect of life there comes a point when something unpleasant must be confronted. Most of the time, the truth is much better.  “Yes, I can see that what you are saying has validity. I just don’t happen to agree with you at this time.” One of the best bosses for whom I worked gave greater credence to an honest answer such as that rather than some bullshit story that would usually come back to bite us both in the butt…right, Sandra?

(4) Lying to get one’s way: “Well, when I spoke with the boss about it, he thought my idea would work well.” “Gee officer I really didn’t know I was going that fast.” I was stopped by a Massachusetts State Trooper a number of years ago. I knew I was speeding; obviously, so did he. When he came back to my car, he asked, “Why did you pass me on the right going 75?’ What could I say? “Because you were in the left lane and you were only going 65.” This didn’t endear me to him, but what could I say; it was the truth. That one cost me big time. Conversely, I was driving home from work one evening and a police officer beckoned me to pull over. When I saw that I was somewhat over the speed limit in a residential neighborhood, I knew that I just hadn’t been thinking. With license and registration in hand, I stepped out of the car, told him that I most certainly was over the speed limit and had been thinking about a problem at work – which was the truth – he smiled and said, “Take it easy…and leave the problems at work.” Period; not ticket. Lying to get your way might work sometimes but the truth is usually a better bet.

(5) Lying to be nice: “Wow, you look amazing. How much weight have you lost?” Then you find out that it’s stage IV cancer; the ash gray skin color that you decided to ignore is part of a death pallor, and your little ‘nice’ lie just put you in a whole world of hurt. The old saying, “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything,” isn’t such bad advice. When my wife was dying, the kids used to come over and tell her how great she looked. Their intentions were good, but we all knew they were merely trying to cheer their mother up, just to be nice. Perhaps the best advice is tone it down if you’re lying to be nice.

(6) Lying to make yourself feel better. This might also be called “deception lying.”  “I’ll start exercising as soon as I can find a gym that fits my time schedule.”  “Oh, I never watch television.” I recently had my annual physical. As usual, the doctor told me that I needed to lose weight. ‘You’re absolutely right,” I said; “However, I’m 78 years old and I’ll be damned if I’m going to give up chocolate and ice cream.” What could he say? I’ll give up bread and a few other things, but I’m not going to lie to him or anyone else about what I will or won’t do to lose the 5 pounds —oops, forgot the zero after that five.

There is one thing of which I’m certain, and that is that everyone lies, even those we believe should be above such a thing. Without going into detail there are just too many examples of those we hold in high esteem that have disappointed us one way or another. We all have our reasons. The important thing is not to live your life as a lie. We are what we are with all of our warts, flaws, and foibles. If we compound it by lying all of the time we will lose friends and find ourselves isolated even from loved ones. And life is just too wonderful to let it be ruined by our own lies.

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Look homeward

Do you believe that the bulk of the American population really cares? North Korea is making these threats and insisting that a state of war exists between it and those in the South. Drugs are pouring across our southern border like water from a spigot but, in all probability, you and I don’t see the effects of their death and devastation. There’s a three week or one month hue and cry about greater gun control, but nothing has happened on the national level. Connecticut has passed some pretty strict laws, including no magazine under ten rounds…but they have no plans to haul in those who already possess them. If you’re an immigrant and you’re already here, you probably have a pretty good chance of staying and gaining citizenship. What does that tell others who want to get into the country illegally? Go for it! If you lay low for a long enough period, you’ll probably be okay. Nobody cares except the people in Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, California, and not all of them really give a damn….probably fewer than you might think.

It appears that we are becoming the Ununited States of NIMBY. Everything is fine as long as you don’t try to do it in my back yard. I pay my taxes – or not – and I do my thing, whatever that happens to be. I’m blind to the fact that there are people right here in my community who would do anything for a “fix” if that’s what they’re calling it these days because, so far anyway, they haven’t broken into my house [where they wouldn’t find much anyway] and they haven’t stuck a gun in my back for money. I have little concern about illegal immigration because I’m not certain how it affects me except to realize that some crops have to be harvested by hand and that we don’t want to use prisoners or truck in homeless to do it. Therefore, since it appears to be beneath much of the rest of the population, migrant workers, many of them illegals get the job done. It may seem a piss poor job to many people but it’s a hell of a lot for someone who has nothing and not very many prospects.

Most of us just want to live and let live. Unless it affects us directly, we aren’t popping off e-mails to our Congressman or woman and our Senator. Most of us don’t understand (a) how our debt reached 16 plus trillion dollars, and we probably have trouble looking at so many numbers following that sixteen. We may look around and see some of our neighbors adding on to their house or we drive through neighborhoods and see the MacMansions that have been constructed and we might even get a bit envious. While we may want to “keep up with the Jones’s,” we should remember the second part of that saying…”the Jones’s are in debt.”

Certainly my children are concerned about school safety. Our three kids have children that range in age from kindergarten to senior in college and everything in between. Does the safety of their children concern me? Of course it does, but I don’t lose sleep over it because I know that somewhere in this country sometime soon there will be another crazy who will get his or her hands on some guns and will do the same damn thing that’s been done in so many places. How many will die? I haven’t a clue, but as long as there are guns, and there will always be guns, there will be people who will try to surpass the record set by this one or that one. Hell, it’s the American way; no, it isn’t really, but it certainly seems that way.

I don’t know the concerns of the people who live in Minnesota or Nebraska or Iowa or Indiana. I’m certain they are many. They don’t affect me, so I’m really not too concerned. It some group in one of those states wants to do something that will impact me negatively, and then I become concerned. If someone from one of those states sends me an e-mail and outlines what their issues happen to be, I’ll probably mouth off about it…one way or the other.

Perhaps all of this makes me – on some level – a state’s rights proponent. I’d like to be able to see gay and lesbian couples marry; I’d like to see a woman have a choice about how she uses her body…seems to me we’re mature enough to let that happen. Those I consider being issues of national concern and therefore should be settled at the national level. We should also be intelligent enough to understand that our approach to gun control, background checks, the size of gun magazines, and any other issues relating to weapons that fire bullets is never going to be solved by 535 people in Washington, D.C. There are just too many divergent views. This is a state issue. You tell people who use their weapons to put food on the table that they cannot use a particular type of weapon and you are taking that food away from them. Oh, and good luck trying to find the straw purchasers; we’ve got bigger fish to fry than to be too concerned about that issue.

Here’s the way I see it. (1) Let the states identify their real problems and tax whatever to get the revenue to pay for seventy-five percent of the cost. The federal government, through income tax revenue, should be able to come up with the extra twenty-five percent. If it was a fifty-fifty deal, the states would never get the money and the federal government would demand to come in and screw it up so that nothing would be done. (2) Let the federal government devise ways in which to keep our borders safe and prevent terrorism from taking place inside those borders. Where border states are concerned, those with problems, eg, the four states mentioned in paragraph one of this essay, the federal government should play an extremely minor role in telling the states what they can and cannot do. (3) Any time that any group of people feel their personal rights are being infringed upon by the state, they will have the opportunity to bring before a “supreme court” in their state to hear their grievances. If that doesn’t work, the Supreme Court of the United States will make a decision to hear from the group or not. Yes, the Supreme Court docket is loaded; the question is what kind of cases they are hearing? Do they involve big business and big dollars or do they involve the citizens of the United States. Other than these, let the states handle their own problems.

We are still the richest nation in the world, but we really don’t know how to use that wealth. We spend so much money trying to cure the ills of the rest of the world that we seem to have forgotten that we have ills of our own. We are so careful to be politically correct in our own country that we’ve forgotten our founding principles. Remember, “You can please some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time; but you cannot please all of the people all of the time.” It’s about time we stopped trying to please all of the people by allowing the federal government to dictate to us what to do in situations where the states could handle whatever it is perfectly well.

It really appears to me that we’ve lost perspective about our country. We’ve become more concerned about what’s happening with other countries and not enough concerned about what’s going on right here at home. While Thomas Wolfe may have written “You Can’t Go Home Again,” he also wrote “Look Homeward Angel.” Perhaps it’s time we begin to forget the first and think much, much harder about the second.

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But what can we do?

“Now more than ever before, the people are responsible for the character of their Congress. If that body be ignorant, reckless and corrupt, it is because the people tolerate ignorance, recklessness and corruption.” James Garfield

A little over a decade ago, the following obituary appeared in a number of large city dailies across the country, “William Proxmire, a political maverick during 32 years in the Senate who crusaded against government waste and irritated presidents and lawmakers from both parties because of his contempt for the mutual back-scratching most politicians engage in, died yesterday in Sykesville, Md., about 40 miles from Washington. He was 90.” Just in case you’re too young to remember, Senator Proxmire (D) Wisconsin, was the originator of the Golden Fleece Award, presented whenever he damn well felt like it to government organizations for the wasteful manner in which they spent monies.

Included in those receiving the wrath of Bill Proxmire was the “National Science Foundation for spending $84,000 to determine why people fall in love.” According to one rather lengthy obit, “Another Golden Fleece Award went to the National Institute for Mental Health, which spent $97,000 to study, among other things, what went on in a Peruvian brothel. The researchers said they made repeated visits in the interests of accuracy.”  We’ve all heard of the $600 toilet seats and the $200 hammers that were supposedly purchased by NASA or the Defense Department, but did you know that the Defense Department spent $3,000 on a study to determine if members of the military should carry umbrellas when it rained?

After Proxmire left Congress in 1989, it appeared that more than a few Congressmen and women breathed a sigh of relief. Why Congress, you ask? Who the hell do you think hands out the monies to NIH, NSF, NIMH, DOD, and the many other acronymic, “Over here; over hear; my hand is out waiting to be filled with dough from your bottomless, brainless pit!” groups. So the pork barrel remained unquestioned until2003 when former(R) Oklahoma Congressman Tom Coburn stepped up and introduced America to Breach of Trust, an anecdotal recounting of his three terms as a member of the House of Representatives. While I have yet to read his first book – and I surely will – he began writing the Book of Waste in 2010 in which he openly challenges many of the wasteful expenditures that take place inside the beltway. The 2012 version, which I am currently reading is enough to make one sick.

“If ever time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in Government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin.”
Samuel Adams

Senator Coburn who can also be called Dr. since he is a physician, outlines the 100 most egregious expenditures, approved by Congress and doled out to organizations who (a) don’t need them (b) don’t use them for their original purpose, and (c) apply for them merely because they know a good rubber stamp when they see one.  Number 5 on Dr. Coburn’s list is the U.S. Agency for International Development’s $27 million plan to help Morocco improve its economic competitiveness. A key component of the project involved “…training Moroccans to create and design pottery to sell in domestic and international markets.” That might be all well and good except that Moroccans have been making pottery since before America was a nation, and should probably send some of their potters to America to train our folks in the art.. Another problem centered on the fact that the translator was “…not fluent in English and was unable to transmit large portions of the lectures to the participants.”

I find it difficult to believe…nah, I find it completely within the realm of academia, that researchers at San Diiego State University and the University of California at Davis spent a portion of a $325,000 NSF grant to build a robotic squirrel to answer that age-old question, “Will rattlesnakes kill a squirrel,” or some stupid crap like that. These are your taxpayer dollars that are paying for this. Are you beginning to get a bit irritated yet? If not, would you believe that the US Department of Agriculture is spending $300,000 this year to promote caviar; oh yeah, we’ll just have Jeeves jump in the Bentley and go down to the local Hannaford’s and pick up a case or two. Who the hell is kidding who? I cannot remember the last time we had a decent piece of meat at the dinner table and they’re out promoting caviar?

There has been a lot of talk about eliminating the penny from our monetary system. It’s not a bad idea since it costs two plus cents to make each penny. If I read Dr. Coburn’s analysis correctly, we could eliminate the penny and save around $70 million per year. Oh, and it should be noted that the nickel now costs eleven cents per coin to produce. Other countries have already realized the cost savings by stopping production of their lowest denomination coinage. What’s wrong with us?

The creation of video games by the US Department of Education, NASA, the National Endowment for the Arts, and several other government agencies is sickeningly expensive. If I have to watch a video on “How to watch television,” there is something seriously wrong.

The world’s largest snack food maker is receiving a grant of $1.3 million to build a Greek yogurt factory in New York. Food giant PepsiCo Inc, “…earned net revenues of $66 billion last year.” They now want to branch out and working with a German company, “bring premium yogurt products to the U.S.” The USDA seems hell-bent on getting us to upgrade our taste buds. Between the promotion of caviar and the building of a “premium” yogurt facility, I can hardly wait. I may have to, however, because Social Security and my modest retirement income certainly will keep me from $400 an ounce fish eggs and my reliance on Dannon.

A number of years ago a friend of mine went to Iraq as part of a police training program for the Iraqi police. This man is conscientious, hard-working , and a stickler for detail. Evidently, he’s one of a few. The State Department has pissed away over$400.2 million on what appears to be an undefined professional development program lacking in any goals or transferable skills for the Iraqi’s police. By the by, my friend is no longer in Iraq.

I would like to be able to recommend this book, if for nothing more than the “pissed-off-factor.” However, in all candor, I’m having trouble finishing it. To say that I’m mad about the wasteful spending by Congress and by the departments within our government is an understatement.  Dr/Senator Coburn has done a magnificent job of highlighting some of the waste of taxpayer dollars in our country. Read the book. It will show very clearly that there is no partisanship when it comes to wasteful spending. The real question is what can we do about it?

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“Unto thine own self be true”

“Unto thine own self be true. And it must follow as the day the night: Thou canst not be false to any man.”

Polonius’s admonition to his son, Laertes, has been a subject of scholarly research by many a teacher and student. What did the father want his son to learn? What does this actually mean? Is it really possible for anyone to remain true to him or herself? Please explain what it means to be true to yourself? Is it a good thing; is it a bad thing. Is being true part of nature or part of nurture? You hear it all the time; “Oh, but he was such a sweet boy. He would never butcher those 32 people. Why, he even mowed my lawn and never even charged me a dime.”

Where am I going with this? Well, somehow – since the NCAA basketball tournament has yet to start – I was convinced to watch some of the trial of Jody Arias, the Arizona woman who is charged with shooting her boyfriend and then stabbing him 27 times and then slitting his throat. I don’t know if such a word exists, but she is, without question, the most chameleonic person I have ever seen in my life. I watched just under an hour of the trial. A defense-appointed psychologist was testifying. Much of the time, the camera was focused on Ms. Arias. For my money, she didn’t hide her feelings all that well. They ranged from amusement to violent rage with every other emotion in between. Her eyes, which she has covered by horned rim classes, are her giveaway. While she says that she’s nearsighted, she has to take her glasses off to read exhibits handed to her…hmm, how does that work again? My reaction to Ms. Arias was that she’s been messed up for a long, long time. I don’t believe she knows or understands what truth is or how she could ever be true, to herself or anyone else. If she’s being true to herself, she is a true sociopath. How did this happen?

How is it possible to be true to ourselves and what does it mean? Here’s my take on it, and remember, this is one person’s understanding of what it means to be true to oneself. Being true to yourself means accepting and living by the values that were instilled in you by those you regard as heroes or mentors in your life. If you grew up with parents or siblings who kicked the crap kicked out of you on a daily basis, I have the feeling that you have a set of values that are completely different from someone who grew up in a loving and caring environment. If dear old dear old mom began each evening by getting a slap in the face as dad walked through the door, you just might begin to get the idea that women are punching bags (you idiot). This is what I would refer to as the nurturing part of how one’s values are developed.

Sometimes – perhaps more often than not – bad household situations can be turned around by friends, by other families, by teachers, and/or other people in one’s life who can instill more positive values. Unfortunately, we see too many examples every day of those who don’t abandon or overcome the bad things that happened. Is it possible that someone like Jody Arias is just wired differently; that the social environment in which she was raised has nothing to do with her behavior?

To me it seems that there has to be an extra chromosome or one missing in people like Arias or Bunday, Aileen Wournos, or the BTK killer, or any number of others who could be cited. Some grew up in horrible home environments; others grew up in loving homes. What turns people like that into the people they become? We are in our infancy of determining what is in the mind of someone who kills. Are they true to themselves or did they go off the rails somewhere along the way?  Arias maintains that her family didn’t encourage or appreciate her high school art. Is that a reason to flip out. If you shoot someone in the forehead, do you really have to inflict 27 stab wounds and then slice the throat? I mean, after all, the bullet probably did the job so she had to be really pissed!

It’s a times like these that I remember the lesson of the Dean of the College of Business at Northeastern, Dr. Roger S. Hamilton. On more than one occasion he told me, “When I graduated with a BS from Pitt, I thought I knew everything. When I began my graduate program I realized just how ignorant I really was. After attaining an MBA, I was positive I knew all there was to know. Then I began my doctoral program at Harvard. When I graduated and received my Ph.D, I finally realized that unless I continued to learn something every day of my life, I would remain ignorant forever.” Were he alive today, I cannot imagine what Dean Hamilton would think. The Internet and smart phones, and so many other 21^st Century toys would probably cause him apoplexy. Now let me say that Roger became a colleague and a friend as well as one of my mentors. It is, perhaps, for that reason that I try to learn something new daily, either from the Net or from someone who I feel can teach me. It may be from someone at the gym or the mechanic in the garage where my ’99 Camry enjoys spending time. Knowledge can come from anywhere and everywhere. Sometimes that new knowledge is positive and sometimes not. I guess it depends on how you wish to process it; it depends on whether it helps you to “unto thine own self be true.”

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Putting pettiness aside

It’s not so much that I’m mad about the shenanigans that are going on in Washington; no, it’s that I’m terribly upset that our country has come to this state of ‘hatred.’ Sure, we’ve been through these episodes before in our history and we have survived. One can go all the way back to the Pilgrims versus the Puritans I suppose, but I prefer the Revolutionary War as a time when neighbor hated neighbor and, in too many cases, murder was the outcome. The not-so-humorous joke is that more Americans were killed in the Civil War than in any other this nation has fought. We have been a divided nation since our founding, but I’m not certain that in my nearly eight decades of life I have ever seen a division greater than today.

We are supposed to be, “one nation under God,” and yet, there is such a separation of wealth that it would be more correct to say, “Many nations under God.” Heck, when you stop and think about it, we can’t even decide on which God it is that we are supposed to be under. We are not one nation; we are fragments of a former nation, and if someone doesn’t grasp the reigns of leadership in the very near future, we are going to become a non-nation, weakening itself to the point that we may as well go back and becoming another colony of Great Britain.

I am sick to death of the pettiness that I find in our nation’s supposed capitol, Washington, D.C.  From President Obama’s pettiness of closing the White House to tourists to Rand Paul’s twelve-hour filibuster to prevent a vote on confirmation of John Brennan as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), there is nothing but childish action and reaction taking place. It really is quite sad to see grown men and women, supposedly intelligent people behaving in such a manner.

“If we don’t cut spending we will be leaving a massive debt for our children and grandchildren to pay.” Okay and your point is? Hell, we’ve been in hock up to our ears for so long that even our own citizens have stopped caring. We are a nation of “I don’t care as long as I get mine; a nation of NIMBY’s; a nation of hooray for me and to hell with you!” I can’t be hard on Congress and the White House when all I have to do is watch how people act in the supermarket when there is the threat of a winter storm.  When those same folks start bitching about, “…oh, we lost power and by the time it came back on I had to throw out all the food in the freezer.” Hey, ain’t life a bitch when your freezer is so full? Did you even consider what homeless people were doing while you were stocking up, afraid you might not be able to get out for a couple of days? Of course you didn’t; you were getting yours and to hell with the rest of the world!

Somehow, we have gone off the rails. I can’t tell you exactly why or how this has happened, but I know that it has.  I remember when a couple of us would go up to old Mr. Feeney’s house after a snowstorm and shovel his driveway and the path to his front door. If some other kids came along, they’d usually lend a hand. Of course, we went to other people’s houses and charge them for shoveling, but Mr. Feeney lived on our street and he was ‘old.’ I’m quite certain he wasn’t as old as we thought, but then, what did we know? I just don’t see that attitude with children or adults today.

Are there any numbers of isolated cases where people do good things for others?  Of course, there are, but we don’t hear about them because there is so much bad news to talk about. “If it bleeds it leads” is still the motto of our news media. Who wants to hear about a group of people getting together with their ‘buy-one-get-one-free’ coupons just to benefit a food bank or a homeless shelter? It doesn’t sell and it doesn’t attract advertising dollars.

Whether you are citing Leviticus 19:18, “‘Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the LORD” or Mark 12:31, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no greater commandment than these,” or not citing the Holy Bible at all, it’s a pretty good idea to remember that there are a whole lot of people out there who can use the help if we can give it.

The art of compromise is not difficult. If we are to grow as a nation, our leaders must learn to put aside their pettiness. We, each and every man and woman in this country, must begin to look on themselves as Americans first and behave as Americans should.

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