For a stretch of six hours, the worries of life melted away in pursuit of the fight over the worries of the world. And it felt good.
It was a light turnout in front of the Statehouse. But, it was an enthusiastic group which gathered in defense of liberty and the basic human right to live without the specter known as the force of government weighing on any of us.
I did not make my way there right away. I didn't want to leave my wife, Marcy, by herself for too long while she's doing chemotherapy at the OSU Medical Center. So, I arrived shortly before 2 p.m. I missed a few people who had already come and gone. And, the last vestiges scattered shortly before 3 when Richard, the gentleman who posted the dance party here in Facebook, got too dehydrated and feeling well-done in the sun to continue.
The gathering afforded me an opportunity to finally cross paths with a pair of liberty-driven political dynamos I've enjoyed the opportunity to get to know via Facebook, Valerie and Pádhraig, something to which I've looked forward for some time.
The Libertarian Party of Ohio's annual cookout drew a good crowd. There's still a fire in people's bellies to press-on despite the excessive anti-ballot-access measures voted-on by the state legislature. Since the last cookout, the brain trust in Washington, D.C., has piled another $1 trillion of debt on our shoulders. We're still ready to challenge the obsolete status quo.
The highlight of this year's cookout was a new feature conceived by Bob Bridges: auctioning-off opportunities to put a pie in the face of a party leader. The scheduled lineup consisted of Central Committee Chair Luke McKellar, Political Division Director Michael Johnston (also serving on the Central Committee), Central Committee Vice Chair Bob Bridges, and Executive Committee Chair Kevin Knedler.
Kevin was able to draw the highest overall bid for the pleasure of donning a face-full of whipped cream. But, just when it appeared that portion of the festivities were done, our Allen County Libertarian Party Treasurer Paul Hinds called out of the blue, "I'll pay $20 to put a pie in Don's face!"
I can only imagine what the look on my face must have been at that moment. Before I was able to process what I'd been thrust into, higher bids began erupting out of the crowd all around me.
And so I said, "Hey, if I can have a good laugh at others getting pied, then I can take one too."
When it was all said and done, for someone who wasn't on the pie-flinging docket I somehow elicited the second-highest winning bid: which was called by Josh Winkler.
While all this was playing out, I received a call and voicemail from Libertarian Party (National) Central Committee Chair Mark Hinkle, who thought so highly of my most recent blog -- dissecting local regulations of distributing meals to the homeless in Orlando and Houston -- that he was seeking permission to publish it at the LP Website blog.
After hearing the message, I felt compelled to share it with everyone who was still there. At that point I commented, "As if my head couldn't get any bigger," to which someone in the crowd replied, "So we'll need a bigger pie pan next year."
All in all, it was a good day for liberty in Ohio. And, I can't thank everyone enough for making me feel at home as a Buckeye.
When I got back to Marcy's hospital room, all that bluster and ego stimulation melted away upon seeing the one with whom I hope to spend the rest of my life feeling awful and looking so uncomfortable. Cancer just has a way of making you feel less effusive.
But that's OK. I feel at home. And, it feels good to be a Buckeye.
Sunday, June 5, 2011
Friday, June 3, 2011
Can I get seconds on my portion of Big Government?
For I was hungry, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me. Matthew 25:35,36
What would you say if I told you – depending on where you're at – you could go to jail for feeding homeless people?
If you possess a lick of common sense, your reply would likely include an expletive (or two) insinuating I was attempting to excavate livestock waste in your general direction.
Unfortunately, I'm not full of it. Down in Florida, three people were arrested recently for doing just that.
An article in the June 2 edition of the Orlando Sentinel detailed the roundup, which took place in one of the city's parks. The trio reportedly are members of an organization which calls itself Orlando Food Not Bombs. Two of the members posted the $250 bail shortly after their arrests; one – Keith McHenry – is reported to have chosen to forego bail and "let the legal process take its course."
McHenry, according to the Sentinel, is a co-founder of the International Food Not Bombs movement.
Worse yet, the arrests in Orlando are not an isolated story but may be indicative of a trend in American cities. It would seem the latest great new wave of public policy is the War on Individual Charity.
I read a story similar to this out of Houston months ago. There was a couple there who were told by authorities they had to cease and desist home-cooking meals and passing them out to the homeless people in the city as they found them – Progressive do-gooders were unhappy that they hadn't gone through all the health department inspections of their home kitchen and other credentialing.
A representative of the local Health and Human Services Department who spoke with the Houston Chronicle insisted the city had to look out for the public health and wellbeing of the homeless by enforcing controls for public food safety in all situations of food distribution.
So, the ultimate logic is it's better to increase the homeless' risk of starvation (or at the very least malnutrition) than have to worry about whether or not the less fortunate might or might not be exposed to the same risk of food-borne pathogens as they otherwise might be by going to a food pantry and getting the same food from there that they'd be getting from a Good Samaritan who bought those exact same food items at their nearby grocery store and cooked it for them.
But, all is not lost for the Houston couple. According to another government paper pusher there, instead of taking it upon themselves to do charitable work they could avoid the hassle by signing-up with one of the local-government-approved non-profits.
Yes, scoop-me-up another healthy serving of Nanny State, please!!
What would you say if I told you – depending on where you're at – you could go to jail for feeding homeless people?
If you possess a lick of common sense, your reply would likely include an expletive (or two) insinuating I was attempting to excavate livestock waste in your general direction.
Unfortunately, I'm not full of it. Down in Florida, three people were arrested recently for doing just that.
An article in the June 2 edition of the Orlando Sentinel detailed the roundup, which took place in one of the city's parks. The trio reportedly are members of an organization which calls itself Orlando Food Not Bombs. Two of the members posted the $250 bail shortly after their arrests; one – Keith McHenry – is reported to have chosen to forego bail and "let the legal process take its course."
McHenry, according to the Sentinel, is a co-founder of the International Food Not Bombs movement.
Worse yet, the arrests in Orlando are not an isolated story but may be indicative of a trend in American cities. It would seem the latest great new wave of public policy is the War on Individual Charity.
I read a story similar to this out of Houston months ago. There was a couple there who were told by authorities they had to cease and desist home-cooking meals and passing them out to the homeless people in the city as they found them – Progressive do-gooders were unhappy that they hadn't gone through all the health department inspections of their home kitchen and other credentialing.
A representative of the local Health and Human Services Department who spoke with the Houston Chronicle insisted the city had to look out for the public health and wellbeing of the homeless by enforcing controls for public food safety in all situations of food distribution.
So, the ultimate logic is it's better to increase the homeless' risk of starvation (or at the very least malnutrition) than have to worry about whether or not the less fortunate might or might not be exposed to the same risk of food-borne pathogens as they otherwise might be by going to a food pantry and getting the same food from there that they'd be getting from a Good Samaritan who bought those exact same food items at their nearby grocery store and cooked it for them.
But, all is not lost for the Houston couple. According to another government paper pusher there, instead of taking it upon themselves to do charitable work they could avoid the hassle by signing-up with one of the local-government-approved non-profits.
Yes, scoop-me-up another healthy serving of Nanny State, please!!
Monday, May 30, 2011
Weiner served-up as Dirt-Bag du Jour
This weekend's breaking stories about the alleged online improprieties of Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) are the latest highlight reel on a long-standing game that has been played in national politics.
For those who may be living in an even tighter bubble than I am, Weiner is purported to have attempted to send – via direct message on Twitter – a picture of his semi-upright Mini Me (albeit under the cloak of his boxer-style briefs) to a college coed in the Seattle area.
An amusingly appropriate (or, inappropriate) #Weinergate hashtag has inspired an enormous load of 140-character commentaries on the swelling topic of interest.
The fact remains, however, that Weiner is just one more in a growing circle of jerks among the American political class.
Actually, if you briefly snake your way through the political history of the last 20 years, it’s not hard to recognize the slow-growing score between high-profile players of the two major parties.
Up until the last few days, the Democrats held a bulging 5-3 advantage in the box score. This weekend, Mr. Weiner managed to stiffen-up this particular unwelcome advance in the competition by inching the score one closer to being knotted-up.
Let's review the swelling list of contemporary, high-profile unfaithful – starting in chronological order.
Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (R-GA) became the Left's first trophy by fooling-around on not one but two of his then-wives (he’s on wife No. 3 at the moment) – the affair behind his first wife’s back taking place even while she was hospitalized to have a benign tumor removed.
Former President Bill Clinton scored on the GOP's behalf by handling pork-laden legislation in the Oval Office with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.
Democrat Gary Condit, the erstwhile representative from Fresno, was known first for being a Blue Dog and then turning other parts of him blue with one of his staffers ten years ago.
Larry Craig proved to be possibly the most amusing instances of the swelling congressional members who have been unfaithful. The now-former representative from Idaho was arrested in Minnesota several years ago for trying to solicit some fun-on-the-fly at an airport men's room. What’s exceptionally interesting is the fact Craig had been one of the Republicans’ leading opponents of gay rights.
The following year, Eliot Spitzer, then governor of New York (previously the state's attorney general) proved to be the most pragmatic of the lot by simply keeping the local high-dollar call-girl registry on his speed dial. By the sound of things in the media, there was no shortage of dialing going on outside of Albany.
Two years ago, then-Governor of South Carolina Mark Sanford followed the bursting of the housing bubble by bursting the GOP's "rising star bubble." Sanford had quickly risen in prominence by fighting a federal mandate to accept Stimulus money through President Barack Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Soon after, it was revealed he had been pursuing his own stimulus through the benefits of a "friend" in Argentina.
A once-obscure (now former) representative named Chris Lee (R-NY) popped the cork on 2011's headlines of hedonism by becoming the first of a threesome of politicians to have news of their improprieties shoot all over the nation. Lee was caught attempting to hook-up with a woman via Craigslist, going so far as to send her a teenage-esque camera-phone picture of himself flexing shirtless in front of a mirror.
It's since been alleged he also pursued transgendered regulars of Craigslist. Perhaps he likes to find the same qualities in his illicit sex partners that he prefers in his doubles-tennis partners: experience players with the physical attributes to swing both directions.
Several short weeks ago as we all know, California's outgoing governor Arnold Schwarzenegger aroused new laughs as revelations of a 10-year-old love-child with one of his housekeepers splashed everywhere – revealing he had gone from the Governator to the Fornicator.
Representative Weiner now becomes the new tip of the spear.
As far as so-called scandals go, his story of sexual impropriety is actually fairly lame. What we have is a newlywed inserting himself into a midlife crisis that allegedly involves sexting a gal half his age – using a soft-core digital picture that would seem to say, "I'm kinda happy to see you."
Let's face it: the eye of this political storm centers on the social media equivalent of IHOP’s "pig in a blanket." Anthony Weiner is a veritable Steve Urkel among a collection of Joey Tribbianis.
Also, what separates Weiner – and his fellow camera-happy counterpart Lee – from the rest of the crowd is the fact with Newt, Slick Willy, Condit, Spitzer, Sanford, and Arnie we know they at least were getting some on the road to public shame and embarrassment. With Craig we are left to presume he must have got some previously since when he found himself in the grips of law enforcement it appeared he’d had plenty of practice at that handicraft.
Lee and Weiner, on the other hand, basically got caught trolling for hoes on the Internet – so not worth it, as I'm sure hindsight has illuminated for them by now.
All adolescent double entendres aside at this point, it is quite obvious (to me, at least) the fervor with which so many on the right have pounced on the New York Democrat's indignity is in response to the back-to-back embarrassments caused by Schwarzenegger and Lee to the GOP this year. The right had been jonesing for someone to rake over the coals of public opinion so they could regain some token, meaningless moral-high-ground points.
It honestly should go without saying that the next question on this matter is, "Does anyone, anywhere, anymore really believe there isn't a widespread, across-the-board character deficit in the greasy world of politics?"
As we can plainly see by the list above of revisited infidelities, there is nothing at all remarkable about Anthony Weiner. He is little more than the Dirt-Bag du Jour.
The majority of the focus on his willy-nilly cyber adventures is due to the fact he has been on a public campaign of righteous indignation over the last year that has had little to directly do either with his party's policies while they held across-the-board power in Washington or the DNC's platform.
Like it or not, Weiner should not be surprised by the conservative feeding frenzy. He invited much of it upon himself with his own accusatory finger.
For those who may be living in an even tighter bubble than I am, Weiner is purported to have attempted to send – via direct message on Twitter – a picture of his semi-upright Mini Me (albeit under the cloak of his boxer-style briefs) to a college coed in the Seattle area.
An amusingly appropriate (or, inappropriate) #Weinergate hashtag has inspired an enormous load of 140-character commentaries on the swelling topic of interest.
The fact remains, however, that Weiner is just one more in a growing circle of jerks among the American political class.
Actually, if you briefly snake your way through the political history of the last 20 years, it’s not hard to recognize the slow-growing score between high-profile players of the two major parties.
Up until the last few days, the Democrats held a bulging 5-3 advantage in the box score. This weekend, Mr. Weiner managed to stiffen-up this particular unwelcome advance in the competition by inching the score one closer to being knotted-up.
Let's review the swelling list of contemporary, high-profile unfaithful – starting in chronological order.
Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (R-GA) became the Left's first trophy by fooling-around on not one but two of his then-wives (he’s on wife No. 3 at the moment) – the affair behind his first wife’s back taking place even while she was hospitalized to have a benign tumor removed.
Former President Bill Clinton scored on the GOP's behalf by handling pork-laden legislation in the Oval Office with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.
Democrat Gary Condit, the erstwhile representative from Fresno, was known first for being a Blue Dog and then turning other parts of him blue with one of his staffers ten years ago.
Larry Craig proved to be possibly the most amusing instances of the swelling congressional members who have been unfaithful. The now-former representative from Idaho was arrested in Minnesota several years ago for trying to solicit some fun-on-the-fly at an airport men's room. What’s exceptionally interesting is the fact Craig had been one of the Republicans’ leading opponents of gay rights.
The following year, Eliot Spitzer, then governor of New York (previously the state's attorney general) proved to be the most pragmatic of the lot by simply keeping the local high-dollar call-girl registry on his speed dial. By the sound of things in the media, there was no shortage of dialing going on outside of Albany.
Two years ago, then-Governor of South Carolina Mark Sanford followed the bursting of the housing bubble by bursting the GOP's "rising star bubble." Sanford had quickly risen in prominence by fighting a federal mandate to accept Stimulus money through President Barack Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Soon after, it was revealed he had been pursuing his own stimulus through the benefits of a "friend" in Argentina.
A once-obscure (now former) representative named Chris Lee (R-NY) popped the cork on 2011's headlines of hedonism by becoming the first of a threesome of politicians to have news of their improprieties shoot all over the nation. Lee was caught attempting to hook-up with a woman via Craigslist, going so far as to send her a teenage-esque camera-phone picture of himself flexing shirtless in front of a mirror.
It's since been alleged he also pursued transgendered regulars of Craigslist. Perhaps he likes to find the same qualities in his illicit sex partners that he prefers in his doubles-tennis partners: experience players with the physical attributes to swing both directions.
Several short weeks ago as we all know, California's outgoing governor Arnold Schwarzenegger aroused new laughs as revelations of a 10-year-old love-child with one of his housekeepers splashed everywhere – revealing he had gone from the Governator to the Fornicator.
Representative Weiner now becomes the new tip of the spear.
As far as so-called scandals go, his story of sexual impropriety is actually fairly lame. What we have is a newlywed inserting himself into a midlife crisis that allegedly involves sexting a gal half his age – using a soft-core digital picture that would seem to say, "I'm kinda happy to see you."
Let's face it: the eye of this political storm centers on the social media equivalent of IHOP’s "pig in a blanket." Anthony Weiner is a veritable Steve Urkel among a collection of Joey Tribbianis.
Also, what separates Weiner – and his fellow camera-happy counterpart Lee – from the rest of the crowd is the fact with Newt, Slick Willy, Condit, Spitzer, Sanford, and Arnie we know they at least were getting some on the road to public shame and embarrassment. With Craig we are left to presume he must have got some previously since when he found himself in the grips of law enforcement it appeared he’d had plenty of practice at that handicraft.
Lee and Weiner, on the other hand, basically got caught trolling for hoes on the Internet – so not worth it, as I'm sure hindsight has illuminated for them by now.
All adolescent double entendres aside at this point, it is quite obvious (to me, at least) the fervor with which so many on the right have pounced on the New York Democrat's indignity is in response to the back-to-back embarrassments caused by Schwarzenegger and Lee to the GOP this year. The right had been jonesing for someone to rake over the coals of public opinion so they could regain some token, meaningless moral-high-ground points.
It honestly should go without saying that the next question on this matter is, "Does anyone, anywhere, anymore really believe there isn't a widespread, across-the-board character deficit in the greasy world of politics?"
As we can plainly see by the list above of revisited infidelities, there is nothing at all remarkable about Anthony Weiner. He is little more than the Dirt-Bag du Jour.
The majority of the focus on his willy-nilly cyber adventures is due to the fact he has been on a public campaign of righteous indignation over the last year that has had little to directly do either with his party's policies while they held across-the-board power in Washington or the DNC's platform.
Like it or not, Weiner should not be surprised by the conservative feeding frenzy. He invited much of it upon himself with his own accusatory finger.
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
A rant for the sake of ranting
Just when I thought it was safe to apply the brakes and let the engine's idle move the car forward at its own good pace, I find myself wanting now more than ever to straddle that line – as perilously as I can – between inexorability and infirmity.
If you have been to my Website recently or are among my social media contacts, then you are aware of my wife Marcy's recent leukemia diagnosis. As a result, I have found myself looking at how I can set aside politics as much as I can for the time being until her battle with Cancer is won – all without losing the momentum that has been built by the members of the Allen County Libertarian Party here in its inaugural year.
Very simply, it's a matter of priorities.
But then, this morning, I had my Howard Beale moment. I now can say, without hesitation or equivocation, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!"
On my way home from work, I made a brief grocery stop for principally the staples – as well as one or two other items. I went to the checkout lane with what would amount to two armfuls of groceries – thinking nothing of it beyond it being a typical jaunt to the store that ought to cost less than average.
And then the cashier read aloud the final tally. It is rare for me to feel the need to catch my breath. It takes a lot to shock me and even more to offend me. But, at that moment, I not only reflexively drew-in a short breath and held it I also had rapidly overcome the urge to absent-mindedly blurt-out an expletive relating to the waste product of domesticated, horn-bearing livestock.
Two months ago, a load of groceries such as what I purchased this morning would have run under $40.
My total on this day was more than $61.
And, this sticker shock moment was brought to you by Save-A-Lot, Inc.
During the strolls up and down the aisles I had two or three moments that prompted me to silently observe, "Wow, that went up in price."
But, I was there with a pretty brief list and deviated from it only by picking up cheese, two frozen family-size entrees, two cans of soup, and some canned fruit. It was the same kind of abbreviated shopping run at a discount, no-name-brand grocery store that I have been making for years.
After paying the charge I more aggressively in my head began itemizing the prices I saw this morning and comparing them to what I had been used to paying: with some items having been purchased just six or even three weeks prior.
My lunch meat and granola bars had not changed in price. These items I buy because it is much more cost effective to pack a lunch to work than buy it at the engine plant’s cafeteria. However, the same six-pack of pop – out of which I take one with me to work to defray the cost of buying the same quantity from the vending machines in the break areas – I had been able to buy there near the end of April had gone up 66 cents – from $3.33 to $3.99, a 20% jump in price.
At the beginning of last month, as part of a larger effort to fully stock our pantry, I remember the cans of evaporated milk ran less than 80 cents. This is an item that comes in handy every so often for cooking anything calling for milk, such as instant potatoes or fluffing your scrambled eggs. Today the exact same store brand evaporated milk cost 99 cents – another 20% leap in price.
The two cans of mandarin oranges I bought – in an effort to snack healthier and make subtle, incremental choices toward that all-important healthy lifestyle – were 65 cents each: up from the 59 cents I remember paying for them at the beginning of April. That is a jump of 10% for the price of an 11-ounce canned good.
A dozen large eggs cost $1.49.
A year ago at this time, a 48-ounce bag of rice and a 16-ounce tube of frozen ground turkey – two items I have been buying with great regularity for years – were just being bumped-up in price from 99 cents to $1.19. Today, the same ground turkey is $1.59 and the rice has ballooned in price to $1.79.
And there remain other examples from my receipt that are just as astonishing.
Mind you, all this retail apprehension took place at a discount supermarket (i.e., Aldi and Save-A-Lot), where people just looking to stretch their dollars go so they can feed themselves and their families without breaking the bank.
I shudder to think what has been happening price-wise at other locations.
All this background and all this build-up are meant to angle this diatribe toward one, seminal thought: when do we finally decide as a society that enough is enough?!
Now, I have no doubt there will be two or three people who will read this and reach the conclusion "the government should step in and do something about this."
If that is where your thought processes are taking you, then you have buried your head deep enough into the sand to crack your forehead against the bedrock beneath it. "Government stepping in and doing something" is precisely why America is poised to begin pricing itself out of existence.
And, all this is being driven most heavily by two factors: the price of gasoline and the rapidly descending value of the U.S. dollar.
Let's start with gas.
We have a braintrust in Washington, D.C., that is preaching supposed energy independence yet insists upon stonewalling all petroleum drilling efforts within the United States. All the while, every subsequent geological survey that has been published within the last few years has determined we have more oil under our ground than previously believed.
In fact, within our borders and territorial waters, there is enough untapped petroleum beneath the land and ocean floors that American oil producers can potentially outpace the production all of the Middle Eastern nations combined.
Instead, we are spoon-fed a fairy tale of alternative energy sources that will take years (if not decades) to perfect to a point where these industries can make any measurable impact on the costs of energy in America.
The previous administration in the White House bought into the green lie enough to enact (with the blessing of Congress) a ban on the manufacture of incandescent light bulbs. Once this ban goes into effect in this coming January, consumers will be able to choose between compact fluorescent light bulbs which contain toxic levels of mercury or the forthcoming LED light bulbs which will cost approximately $50 each once they hit the market.
Since the food we wish to buy can't get to our nearby stores without the transportation industry trucking it all hither-and-yon for our convenience, when the price of gas skyrockets like it has over the last year the cost of keeping all those Kenworths (et al) rolling down the highways inevitably finds its way into those pesky barcodes on our Cheerios and Weetabix.
The other major factor making our lives too expensive to live-out anymore is the all-out assault of stupidity on the U.S. currency. Between the Bush Administration's T.A.R.P. debacle, the Obama Administration's stimulus lie, and our ongoing projected deficit of roughly $1.6 trillion for this fiscal year, the dollar is being driven to the brink of worthlessness and being abandoned wholesale in the international currency markets.
All three of the preceding examples have required the United States Treasury to borrow more than $3 trillion over the past 2 1/2 years – and that doesn’t even include the debt which had to be incurred to cover the deficits for fiscal years 2008, 2009, and 2010 over the same period of time.
What too many people are not realizing is in all of these instances, in order for the government to pay out all these waste obligations, more currency than previously existed must be printed so that all the transactions associated with these federal appropriations can actually see money changing hands. The spike in the money supply invariably means the value of each and every U.S. dollar out there in the world retains that much less value.
To break it down into terms most people ought to be able to understand, when a number of items or goods are deemed to be a "collector's item" – whether it's a Mario Lemieux rookie card, first edition Barbie Doll, or original print Elvis Presley record – the fewer there are of these particular mementos the greater the value each one retains.
This exact same principle applies directly to our currency.
This isn't even the proverbial Economics 101: we are talking about basic, indisputable mathematics.
As companies in any and all industries here in America see their revenue streams gouged due to the drop in value of the money they presently have, in order to stay afloat they must adjust their prices to cover that shortfall in revenues.
That means their prices must go up – hence inflation.
And when you have the flood of money hit the markets across the world at the pace we have seen since autumn 2008, the analogous effect is best illustrated by the floods coming down the Mississippi River these past few days. The devastation is eerily similar as we witness people's lives and livelihoods washed away with the rising floodwaters.
And the truly insidious part lies in this all-important question: for what?
What is it we had to do that required jeopardizing the viability of the U.S. economy?
If the spigot enabling the flow of money that is the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (Obama's Stimulus) can be shut off before the rest of its allocations can be spent, then it truly will be said that T.A.R.P. will go down in history as the single largest fiscal fraud ever perpetrated upon American taxpayers.
Very little of the $700 billion poured into the Wall Street entities which received them actually went into circulation with the U.S. The most egregious example of this was AIG, which received roughly $180 billion from Uncle Sam and then immediately paid the majority of that money to various financial institutions across Europe to which AIG was indebted.
Massive chunks of T.A.R.P. money – which Bush and leaders in both major parties insisted was necessary to save the financial sector and the economy – will never find its way into circulation within our own borders. Bankers and other financial corporate titans in Europe continue to reap the riches of a cash cow that will leave us all paying-off the interest out of our hard-earned tax dollars for decades to come.
The other major component of Bush's and Obama's combined fraud was the notion the federal government could more wisely pick-and-choose how to distribute and award a combined $1.5 trillion than the people of the United States of America.
Let's say for the sake of argument I agreed with the Washington braintrust that T.A.R.P. and the so-called Stimulus were absolutely necessary to prevent economic armageddon two-and-a-half years ago. If it were up to me, I would have taken that $1.5 trillion and evenly disbursed it to every household which was under mortgage at that time. Based on my research for this statistic, in the late months of 2008 that would be (very) roughly 50 million homes. So, with my plan, almost 50 million households would have received a U.S. Department of Treasury check for approximately $30,000 each.
Common sense dictates that in light of the urgent nature of the situation for both the U.S. economy and the international market, the vast majority of those recipients would have done the right thing with that money and paid enough to their respective lenders to at least get current with their mortgages. Most, I’m inclined to believe, would have used enough sense to even pay-off several additional months’-worth of mortgage payments – which would have helped those homeowners knock-down the principle of those debts, thus significantly reducing their monthly due amounts.
For some, $30,000 would be enough to pay the remaining balance in full and rid themselves of that form of debt.
At the very least, this activity would have led to a flood of about $1 trillion into the American financial sector as the people at-large began feverishly making payments to save their homes.
These speculations leave about half-a-trillion dollars still to be used, which (again) common sense dictates many of the recipients would have opted to buy a new car – thus eliminating the need for the automotive bailouts. Unspent portions beyond that would have led to a surge of cash flow in domestic retail markets and created a genuine recovery from the nightmare.
A small percentage, of course, would have gone into savings and other retirement/"rainy day" accounts. But even that option would have had positive benefits as still just $10-to-20 billion (just… *sigh*) out of all that would have shored-up the liquidity of banks nationwide and boosted confidence in financial markets.
And then, there is the largely unexamined positive consequence of tackling the 2008 crisis in the manner described above.
Over the course of 2008 through 2010 a total of roughly 8 million homes were foreclosed-upon (that doesn’t include the 1.3 million in 2007, when the housing bubble began to burst). For the purpose of simpler math (and due to the absence of the hard data on this) let's assume more than half of those mortgages had two (or even more) signatures (spouses, co-signing parents, etc.) on them.
Now, by bypassing the homeowners and lending $700 billion directly to the banks and other financial sector entities in the manner the Bush Administration did, nearly 15 million people since then now have a foreclosure hanging like an albatross over their credit histories. If you believe in a borrow-and-spend-on-credit economy much like so many politicians advocate today, this means there are now as many as 15 million adults who have been completely taken out of that portion of the economy. Their credit ratings are far too deep in disrepair for any of them to be able to establish credit again for the remainder of this decade.
This is the ongoing complication to the American economic picture that will play as significant of a role in preventing recovery as any other factor.
And no one is talking about this.
But, had anyone in the capitol actually taken a moment to think things through in the waning months of 2008 and handled the bailout intelligently – as opposed to the money carrousel that played-out – it would have served, unfortunately, to only cement in the minds of the general public this misguided notion that all the solutions to society's ills can be found in government action.
They're all experts, don’t you know.
Here in 2011, despite growing public sentiment against further expansion of government, to push to do just that continues to gain steam among our elected so-called leadership.
The push is on for greater control of our energy sources.
The push is on for greater control of the financial sector.
The push is on for greater control of our food supplies.
The push is on for micromanagement of the health care industry.
The push is on for unprecedented control over the Internet.
And so on…
So, let me get this straight, the same government that has:
Given us the compassion of the IRS;
Given us the efficiency of the U.S. Postal Service;
Given us the effectiveness of the Katrina response;
Given us the promptness of the Gulf oil spill response;
Executed a "War on Drugs" that has cost $1 trillion over 40 years and accomplished squat;
And has managed our children's education for the past 40 years…
This same government somehow can be counted-on to manage our health care, our financial sector, our nutritional needs, our energy supplies, and automotive companies?
Seriously?
What will it take? When are we going to finally come together as a nation and say, "Enough is enough?!"
And why, you may ask, do I want to see this take shape?
Because I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!
If you have been to my Website recently or are among my social media contacts, then you are aware of my wife Marcy's recent leukemia diagnosis. As a result, I have found myself looking at how I can set aside politics as much as I can for the time being until her battle with Cancer is won – all without losing the momentum that has been built by the members of the Allen County Libertarian Party here in its inaugural year.
Very simply, it's a matter of priorities.
But then, this morning, I had my Howard Beale moment. I now can say, without hesitation or equivocation, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!"
On my way home from work, I made a brief grocery stop for principally the staples – as well as one or two other items. I went to the checkout lane with what would amount to two armfuls of groceries – thinking nothing of it beyond it being a typical jaunt to the store that ought to cost less than average.
And then the cashier read aloud the final tally. It is rare for me to feel the need to catch my breath. It takes a lot to shock me and even more to offend me. But, at that moment, I not only reflexively drew-in a short breath and held it I also had rapidly overcome the urge to absent-mindedly blurt-out an expletive relating to the waste product of domesticated, horn-bearing livestock.
Two months ago, a load of groceries such as what I purchased this morning would have run under $40.
My total on this day was more than $61.
And, this sticker shock moment was brought to you by Save-A-Lot, Inc.
During the strolls up and down the aisles I had two or three moments that prompted me to silently observe, "Wow, that went up in price."
But, I was there with a pretty brief list and deviated from it only by picking up cheese, two frozen family-size entrees, two cans of soup, and some canned fruit. It was the same kind of abbreviated shopping run at a discount, no-name-brand grocery store that I have been making for years.
After paying the charge I more aggressively in my head began itemizing the prices I saw this morning and comparing them to what I had been used to paying: with some items having been purchased just six or even three weeks prior.
My lunch meat and granola bars had not changed in price. These items I buy because it is much more cost effective to pack a lunch to work than buy it at the engine plant’s cafeteria. However, the same six-pack of pop – out of which I take one with me to work to defray the cost of buying the same quantity from the vending machines in the break areas – I had been able to buy there near the end of April had gone up 66 cents – from $3.33 to $3.99, a 20% jump in price.
At the beginning of last month, as part of a larger effort to fully stock our pantry, I remember the cans of evaporated milk ran less than 80 cents. This is an item that comes in handy every so often for cooking anything calling for milk, such as instant potatoes or fluffing your scrambled eggs. Today the exact same store brand evaporated milk cost 99 cents – another 20% leap in price.
The two cans of mandarin oranges I bought – in an effort to snack healthier and make subtle, incremental choices toward that all-important healthy lifestyle – were 65 cents each: up from the 59 cents I remember paying for them at the beginning of April. That is a jump of 10% for the price of an 11-ounce canned good.
A dozen large eggs cost $1.49.
A year ago at this time, a 48-ounce bag of rice and a 16-ounce tube of frozen ground turkey – two items I have been buying with great regularity for years – were just being bumped-up in price from 99 cents to $1.19. Today, the same ground turkey is $1.59 and the rice has ballooned in price to $1.79.
And there remain other examples from my receipt that are just as astonishing.
Mind you, all this retail apprehension took place at a discount supermarket (i.e., Aldi and Save-A-Lot), where people just looking to stretch their dollars go so they can feed themselves and their families without breaking the bank.
I shudder to think what has been happening price-wise at other locations.
All this background and all this build-up are meant to angle this diatribe toward one, seminal thought: when do we finally decide as a society that enough is enough?!
Now, I have no doubt there will be two or three people who will read this and reach the conclusion "the government should step in and do something about this."
If that is where your thought processes are taking you, then you have buried your head deep enough into the sand to crack your forehead against the bedrock beneath it. "Government stepping in and doing something" is precisely why America is poised to begin pricing itself out of existence.
And, all this is being driven most heavily by two factors: the price of gasoline and the rapidly descending value of the U.S. dollar.
Let's start with gas.
We have a braintrust in Washington, D.C., that is preaching supposed energy independence yet insists upon stonewalling all petroleum drilling efforts within the United States. All the while, every subsequent geological survey that has been published within the last few years has determined we have more oil under our ground than previously believed.
In fact, within our borders and territorial waters, there is enough untapped petroleum beneath the land and ocean floors that American oil producers can potentially outpace the production all of the Middle Eastern nations combined.
Instead, we are spoon-fed a fairy tale of alternative energy sources that will take years (if not decades) to perfect to a point where these industries can make any measurable impact on the costs of energy in America.
The previous administration in the White House bought into the green lie enough to enact (with the blessing of Congress) a ban on the manufacture of incandescent light bulbs. Once this ban goes into effect in this coming January, consumers will be able to choose between compact fluorescent light bulbs which contain toxic levels of mercury or the forthcoming LED light bulbs which will cost approximately $50 each once they hit the market.
Since the food we wish to buy can't get to our nearby stores without the transportation industry trucking it all hither-and-yon for our convenience, when the price of gas skyrockets like it has over the last year the cost of keeping all those Kenworths (et al) rolling down the highways inevitably finds its way into those pesky barcodes on our Cheerios and Weetabix.
The other major factor making our lives too expensive to live-out anymore is the all-out assault of stupidity on the U.S. currency. Between the Bush Administration's T.A.R.P. debacle, the Obama Administration's stimulus lie, and our ongoing projected deficit of roughly $1.6 trillion for this fiscal year, the dollar is being driven to the brink of worthlessness and being abandoned wholesale in the international currency markets.
All three of the preceding examples have required the United States Treasury to borrow more than $3 trillion over the past 2 1/2 years – and that doesn’t even include the debt which had to be incurred to cover the deficits for fiscal years 2008, 2009, and 2010 over the same period of time.
What too many people are not realizing is in all of these instances, in order for the government to pay out all these waste obligations, more currency than previously existed must be printed so that all the transactions associated with these federal appropriations can actually see money changing hands. The spike in the money supply invariably means the value of each and every U.S. dollar out there in the world retains that much less value.
To break it down into terms most people ought to be able to understand, when a number of items or goods are deemed to be a "collector's item" – whether it's a Mario Lemieux rookie card, first edition Barbie Doll, or original print Elvis Presley record – the fewer there are of these particular mementos the greater the value each one retains.
This exact same principle applies directly to our currency.
This isn't even the proverbial Economics 101: we are talking about basic, indisputable mathematics.
As companies in any and all industries here in America see their revenue streams gouged due to the drop in value of the money they presently have, in order to stay afloat they must adjust their prices to cover that shortfall in revenues.
That means their prices must go up – hence inflation.
And when you have the flood of money hit the markets across the world at the pace we have seen since autumn 2008, the analogous effect is best illustrated by the floods coming down the Mississippi River these past few days. The devastation is eerily similar as we witness people's lives and livelihoods washed away with the rising floodwaters.
And the truly insidious part lies in this all-important question: for what?
What is it we had to do that required jeopardizing the viability of the U.S. economy?
If the spigot enabling the flow of money that is the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (Obama's Stimulus) can be shut off before the rest of its allocations can be spent, then it truly will be said that T.A.R.P. will go down in history as the single largest fiscal fraud ever perpetrated upon American taxpayers.
Very little of the $700 billion poured into the Wall Street entities which received them actually went into circulation with the U.S. The most egregious example of this was AIG, which received roughly $180 billion from Uncle Sam and then immediately paid the majority of that money to various financial institutions across Europe to which AIG was indebted.
Massive chunks of T.A.R.P. money – which Bush and leaders in both major parties insisted was necessary to save the financial sector and the economy – will never find its way into circulation within our own borders. Bankers and other financial corporate titans in Europe continue to reap the riches of a cash cow that will leave us all paying-off the interest out of our hard-earned tax dollars for decades to come.
The other major component of Bush's and Obama's combined fraud was the notion the federal government could more wisely pick-and-choose how to distribute and award a combined $1.5 trillion than the people of the United States of America.
Let's say for the sake of argument I agreed with the Washington braintrust that T.A.R.P. and the so-called Stimulus were absolutely necessary to prevent economic armageddon two-and-a-half years ago. If it were up to me, I would have taken that $1.5 trillion and evenly disbursed it to every household which was under mortgage at that time. Based on my research for this statistic, in the late months of 2008 that would be (very) roughly 50 million homes. So, with my plan, almost 50 million households would have received a U.S. Department of Treasury check for approximately $30,000 each.
Common sense dictates that in light of the urgent nature of the situation for both the U.S. economy and the international market, the vast majority of those recipients would have done the right thing with that money and paid enough to their respective lenders to at least get current with their mortgages. Most, I’m inclined to believe, would have used enough sense to even pay-off several additional months’-worth of mortgage payments – which would have helped those homeowners knock-down the principle of those debts, thus significantly reducing their monthly due amounts.
For some, $30,000 would be enough to pay the remaining balance in full and rid themselves of that form of debt.
At the very least, this activity would have led to a flood of about $1 trillion into the American financial sector as the people at-large began feverishly making payments to save their homes.
These speculations leave about half-a-trillion dollars still to be used, which (again) common sense dictates many of the recipients would have opted to buy a new car – thus eliminating the need for the automotive bailouts. Unspent portions beyond that would have led to a surge of cash flow in domestic retail markets and created a genuine recovery from the nightmare.
A small percentage, of course, would have gone into savings and other retirement/"rainy day" accounts. But even that option would have had positive benefits as still just $10-to-20 billion (just… *sigh*) out of all that would have shored-up the liquidity of banks nationwide and boosted confidence in financial markets.
And then, there is the largely unexamined positive consequence of tackling the 2008 crisis in the manner described above.
Over the course of 2008 through 2010 a total of roughly 8 million homes were foreclosed-upon (that doesn’t include the 1.3 million in 2007, when the housing bubble began to burst). For the purpose of simpler math (and due to the absence of the hard data on this) let's assume more than half of those mortgages had two (or even more) signatures (spouses, co-signing parents, etc.) on them.
Now, by bypassing the homeowners and lending $700 billion directly to the banks and other financial sector entities in the manner the Bush Administration did, nearly 15 million people since then now have a foreclosure hanging like an albatross over their credit histories. If you believe in a borrow-and-spend-on-credit economy much like so many politicians advocate today, this means there are now as many as 15 million adults who have been completely taken out of that portion of the economy. Their credit ratings are far too deep in disrepair for any of them to be able to establish credit again for the remainder of this decade.
This is the ongoing complication to the American economic picture that will play as significant of a role in preventing recovery as any other factor.
And no one is talking about this.
But, had anyone in the capitol actually taken a moment to think things through in the waning months of 2008 and handled the bailout intelligently – as opposed to the money carrousel that played-out – it would have served, unfortunately, to only cement in the minds of the general public this misguided notion that all the solutions to society's ills can be found in government action.
They're all experts, don’t you know.
Here in 2011, despite growing public sentiment against further expansion of government, to push to do just that continues to gain steam among our elected so-called leadership.
The push is on for greater control of our energy sources.
The push is on for greater control of the financial sector.
The push is on for greater control of our food supplies.
The push is on for micromanagement of the health care industry.
The push is on for unprecedented control over the Internet.
And so on…
So, let me get this straight, the same government that has:
Given us the compassion of the IRS;
Given us the efficiency of the U.S. Postal Service;
Given us the effectiveness of the Katrina response;
Given us the promptness of the Gulf oil spill response;
Executed a "War on Drugs" that has cost $1 trillion over 40 years and accomplished squat;
And has managed our children's education for the past 40 years…
This same government somehow can be counted-on to manage our health care, our financial sector, our nutritional needs, our energy supplies, and automotive companies?
Seriously?
What will it take? When are we going to finally come together as a nation and say, "Enough is enough?!"
And why, you may ask, do I want to see this take shape?
Because I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!
Friday, May 6, 2011
Moms and their timeless advice
I can't say for certain if my mother has truly gotten any wiser over the years (or, rather, decades) since I've been on this earth or if I just have slowly done a better job of appreciating her sage words as I've aged myself.
But, I recall from my childhood words of wisdom she always would direct at me whenever I got on a rant about someone with whom I was having difficulty at school, or a temperamental cousin, or anyone else.
Mom would say to me, "Pray for your enemies!"
I remember thinking – at the time – now that's dumb!
At the Catholic school I attended, we did daily prayer offerings for family and friends because they were sick, had fallen on other hard times, or approaching some big opportunity: the whole premise being to pray for their recovery and/or good fortune. During Sunday Mass, the prayer offerings seemed to be conducted under the same premises – with the addition of prayers for Church leaders and our elected officials so they may bring wisdom with their actions and decisions (don't snicker at that last example… the good intentions were undeniably pure).
All in all we were encouraged during our youth – both in school and at Mass – to pray on behalf of people for whom we cared or held some perceived vested interest.
So, the notion of praying for someone I disliked seemed rather counterintuitive.
But my mother – being a tremendously more patient person than I – bided her time as she kept telling me time and again, "Pray for your enemies."
And, I say she bided her time because finally, in my mid teen years, she gave me her evidence to support this paradoxical advice. Mom finally shared the story of our old next door neighbor, Mr. Dugan.
Even at that juncture in life I had retained scant memories of Mr. Dugan. Most of what I knew about him came from the myriad of stories I'd heard from my three older brothers as well as Mom. None of these stories were good.
Mr. Dugan was a heavy drinker, a terrible husband, an abusive father, and a general misery to have right on the other side of one's property line. He also was not shy about who saw and heard how miserable he could be. On at least one occasion, his abusive tendencies motivated Mom to walk back into the house, crawl in bed, and cry herself to sleep in the middle of the day.
Living next to Mr. Dugan was bad enough to inspire her to plant a row of Russian olive trees along our chain-link fence to serve as a buffer.
Over the years Mr. Dugan lived next door to my family, Mom said, early-on she began praying for him. She never asked God for anything specific. Mom just prayed for him.
And she kept praying for Mr. Dugan. The more time that passed, the harder she prayed for him – especially as my brothers got older. Eventually as tensions between our families grew and my oldest brother, Michael, was rapidly approaching the age of 18, Mom’s anxiety grew as well. She worried over what the legal consequences would hold for my brothers should a confrontation erupt once any of them were of adult age.
Mom kept praying.
Then all of a sudden, shortly after I turned 5, Mr. Dugan landed a great new job, packed up his wife and three children, and moved away.
We never heard from him again.
Ordinarily, one would think the fable ends here and the moral would be self-evident. But, as the late-great Paul Harvey used to say, "And now, the rest of the story."
Mr. Dugan didn't move all that far away, as it turned-out. His new job was a few miles farther north from where he had been working – yet not so far where he had a real need to relocate. But, while he had no apparent shame, he was at the same time a vain individual: the higher paying, better job meant "the old neighborhood" no longer was good enough and his home no longer was big enough.
The city to our north was rapidly growing and brand new subdivisions were springing-up there left and right – with bigger and nicer houses. The allure was too great for Mr. Dugan to pass-up.
We knew that much before they left. Six years later, however, big gaps in the storyline were rapidly filled-in for us.
The school district into which the Dugans moved participated in the same vocational cooperative (in some areas known as an intermediate school district) as ours. It was called Southeast Oakland Vocational Education Center (SEOVEC).
My brother Brian signed-up for a program at SEOVEC. He happened to be the same age as the oldest Dugan child, Scott. When Brian met several students from the Dugans' new school district, he immediately developed curiosity about our old neighbors and asked these students if they had happened to know them – and Scott specifically.
Upon hearing the name, they seemingly froze in their positions, glanced at Brian in a sideways manner, and gave him "the look." After a second of awkward silence they asked my brother, "How do you know Scott Dugan?"
Brian's new SEOVEC classmates relayed harried tales of malcontent involving Mr. Dugan and Scott. It turned out as he entered his teen years Scott was becoming a chip off the old block. He had begun to grow into a burly young man much like his father. He also was adopting his father's disposition and keen sense of social skills.
Bear in mind, in the late 70s and into the early 80s, the city where they moved – even though it was only a few miles north of Detroit – still predominantly had farmland and other rural expanses and was populated principally with what you could call "northern rednecks."
In short, these were people who didn't take kindly to new inhabitants bringing with them a bad attitude combined with a sense of superiority.
The kids didn’t take kindly to Scott. Consequently, no one took kindly to Mr. Dugan when he stuck his nose into his son's business once the local youth began administering their brand of frontier justice.
Mr. Dugan practically invited the town's youngsters to torque on him, failing to anticipate the hornets nest he was stirring-up. It hadn't occurred to him the folks in the area might not share the same sense of restraint demonstrated by us in the old neighborhood.
Quite possibly the coup de gras perpetrated upon Mr. Dugan happened one summer very shortly before Brian crossed paths with these young men.
Allow me to set this up: Mr. Dugan was quite the lawn freak. Now, our two homes – when he was still next door – were situated on a bend in our street. The position of our house as a result gave our property a trapezoidal shape and, accordingly, the largest front yard on the block.
Mr. Dugan, being so vain and as much of a lawn freak as he was, made it a habit of when he mowed his lawn to mow a portion of ours so as to create the appearance the property line mysteriously angled at some point – thus making his property look bigger.
The Kissicks, being a pragmatic people, quickly determined that if he wanted to do the extra work for us, there was no point in raising any fuss. We knew the truth: it appeared Mr. Dugan needed to "compensate" for something…
So, Mr. Dugan, being so OCD over the quality of his lawn years before the term "OCD" entered the greater lexicon of our society, eventually gave the local ne'er-do-wells of his new community the perfect target for their displeasure.
That summer, Mr. Dugan evidently was so dissatisfied with the appearance of his lawn he had it ripped-up and replaced with brand new sod. Very shortly thereafter, he took the family on a nice, lengthy vacation.
The next night, a few of the youth whose displeasure had been earned by Mr. Dugan and his oldest child paid their home a visit. They pulled up all his fresh, new sod and threw it in as big of chunks as they could wield on top of his roof. The next day, the area saw the start of a classic summer-in-Michigan, multi-day deluge. It was immediately followed by several days of cloudless, hot days of intense sunshine.
The heavy rains ran long, chunky streaks of dirt and grass all along the sides of Mr. Dugan's house and the days of unabated sun exposure baked it all in there for good measure.
For some reason, Mr. Dugan didn't share the other residents' humorous outlook on the situation.
From there, the circumstances only got worse for Mr. Dugan and Scott. Although, the level of creativity demonstrated during all the subsequent activity never quite matched the episode above.
Herein lies the real moral of the story. Whenever you feel the need to subject your neighbors to your social shortcomings and even air your own family's dirty laundry for everyone else living in earshot, be sure to bear this in mind:
Just imagine my mom praying for you.
But, I recall from my childhood words of wisdom she always would direct at me whenever I got on a rant about someone with whom I was having difficulty at school, or a temperamental cousin, or anyone else.
Mom would say to me, "Pray for your enemies!"
I remember thinking – at the time – now that's dumb!
At the Catholic school I attended, we did daily prayer offerings for family and friends because they were sick, had fallen on other hard times, or approaching some big opportunity: the whole premise being to pray for their recovery and/or good fortune. During Sunday Mass, the prayer offerings seemed to be conducted under the same premises – with the addition of prayers for Church leaders and our elected officials so they may bring wisdom with their actions and decisions (don't snicker at that last example… the good intentions were undeniably pure).
All in all we were encouraged during our youth – both in school and at Mass – to pray on behalf of people for whom we cared or held some perceived vested interest.
So, the notion of praying for someone I disliked seemed rather counterintuitive.
But my mother – being a tremendously more patient person than I – bided her time as she kept telling me time and again, "Pray for your enemies."
And, I say she bided her time because finally, in my mid teen years, she gave me her evidence to support this paradoxical advice. Mom finally shared the story of our old next door neighbor, Mr. Dugan.
Even at that juncture in life I had retained scant memories of Mr. Dugan. Most of what I knew about him came from the myriad of stories I'd heard from my three older brothers as well as Mom. None of these stories were good.
Mr. Dugan was a heavy drinker, a terrible husband, an abusive father, and a general misery to have right on the other side of one's property line. He also was not shy about who saw and heard how miserable he could be. On at least one occasion, his abusive tendencies motivated Mom to walk back into the house, crawl in bed, and cry herself to sleep in the middle of the day.
Living next to Mr. Dugan was bad enough to inspire her to plant a row of Russian olive trees along our chain-link fence to serve as a buffer.
Over the years Mr. Dugan lived next door to my family, Mom said, early-on she began praying for him. She never asked God for anything specific. Mom just prayed for him.
And she kept praying for Mr. Dugan. The more time that passed, the harder she prayed for him – especially as my brothers got older. Eventually as tensions between our families grew and my oldest brother, Michael, was rapidly approaching the age of 18, Mom’s anxiety grew as well. She worried over what the legal consequences would hold for my brothers should a confrontation erupt once any of them were of adult age.
Mom kept praying.
Then all of a sudden, shortly after I turned 5, Mr. Dugan landed a great new job, packed up his wife and three children, and moved away.
We never heard from him again.
Ordinarily, one would think the fable ends here and the moral would be self-evident. But, as the late-great Paul Harvey used to say, "And now, the rest of the story."
Mr. Dugan didn't move all that far away, as it turned-out. His new job was a few miles farther north from where he had been working – yet not so far where he had a real need to relocate. But, while he had no apparent shame, he was at the same time a vain individual: the higher paying, better job meant "the old neighborhood" no longer was good enough and his home no longer was big enough.
The city to our north was rapidly growing and brand new subdivisions were springing-up there left and right – with bigger and nicer houses. The allure was too great for Mr. Dugan to pass-up.
We knew that much before they left. Six years later, however, big gaps in the storyline were rapidly filled-in for us.
The school district into which the Dugans moved participated in the same vocational cooperative (in some areas known as an intermediate school district) as ours. It was called Southeast Oakland Vocational Education Center (SEOVEC).
My brother Brian signed-up for a program at SEOVEC. He happened to be the same age as the oldest Dugan child, Scott. When Brian met several students from the Dugans' new school district, he immediately developed curiosity about our old neighbors and asked these students if they had happened to know them – and Scott specifically.
Upon hearing the name, they seemingly froze in their positions, glanced at Brian in a sideways manner, and gave him "the look." After a second of awkward silence they asked my brother, "How do you know Scott Dugan?"
Brian's new SEOVEC classmates relayed harried tales of malcontent involving Mr. Dugan and Scott. It turned out as he entered his teen years Scott was becoming a chip off the old block. He had begun to grow into a burly young man much like his father. He also was adopting his father's disposition and keen sense of social skills.
Bear in mind, in the late 70s and into the early 80s, the city where they moved – even though it was only a few miles north of Detroit – still predominantly had farmland and other rural expanses and was populated principally with what you could call "northern rednecks."
In short, these were people who didn't take kindly to new inhabitants bringing with them a bad attitude combined with a sense of superiority.
The kids didn’t take kindly to Scott. Consequently, no one took kindly to Mr. Dugan when he stuck his nose into his son's business once the local youth began administering their brand of frontier justice.
Mr. Dugan practically invited the town's youngsters to torque on him, failing to anticipate the hornets nest he was stirring-up. It hadn't occurred to him the folks in the area might not share the same sense of restraint demonstrated by us in the old neighborhood.
Quite possibly the coup de gras perpetrated upon Mr. Dugan happened one summer very shortly before Brian crossed paths with these young men.
Allow me to set this up: Mr. Dugan was quite the lawn freak. Now, our two homes – when he was still next door – were situated on a bend in our street. The position of our house as a result gave our property a trapezoidal shape and, accordingly, the largest front yard on the block.
Mr. Dugan, being so vain and as much of a lawn freak as he was, made it a habit of when he mowed his lawn to mow a portion of ours so as to create the appearance the property line mysteriously angled at some point – thus making his property look bigger.
The Kissicks, being a pragmatic people, quickly determined that if he wanted to do the extra work for us, there was no point in raising any fuss. We knew the truth: it appeared Mr. Dugan needed to "compensate" for something…
So, Mr. Dugan, being so OCD over the quality of his lawn years before the term "OCD" entered the greater lexicon of our society, eventually gave the local ne'er-do-wells of his new community the perfect target for their displeasure.
That summer, Mr. Dugan evidently was so dissatisfied with the appearance of his lawn he had it ripped-up and replaced with brand new sod. Very shortly thereafter, he took the family on a nice, lengthy vacation.
The next night, a few of the youth whose displeasure had been earned by Mr. Dugan and his oldest child paid their home a visit. They pulled up all his fresh, new sod and threw it in as big of chunks as they could wield on top of his roof. The next day, the area saw the start of a classic summer-in-Michigan, multi-day deluge. It was immediately followed by several days of cloudless, hot days of intense sunshine.
The heavy rains ran long, chunky streaks of dirt and grass all along the sides of Mr. Dugan's house and the days of unabated sun exposure baked it all in there for good measure.
For some reason, Mr. Dugan didn't share the other residents' humorous outlook on the situation.
From there, the circumstances only got worse for Mr. Dugan and Scott. Although, the level of creativity demonstrated during all the subsequent activity never quite matched the episode above.
Herein lies the real moral of the story. Whenever you feel the need to subject your neighbors to your social shortcomings and even air your own family's dirty laundry for everyone else living in earshot, be sure to bear this in mind:
Just imagine my mom praying for you.
Friday, April 29, 2011
My own 'libertarian moment'
I understand sometimes one can inject too much of him- or herself into a body of writings. Sometimes, however, finding a way to help some readers relate to one's principles trumps the natural human desire to not run afoul of those in one’s social or community sphere.
With that, I offer the following thought despite its mild redundancy to the opening paragraph.
It is one thing to observe the multifarious orders of business which constitute government – relying heavily on standard and online media for information as well as other opinion analysis – and then publish a semi-disconnected perspective on it all.
It is quite another to experience something in life which is tremendously analogous to a topic of particular ire to libertarians and other small-government proponents: handouts and public entitlements.
While it has taken me a couple of months to finally get around to this topic, and it goes hand-in-hand well with a previous blog entry, this is a personal experience which reinforces a core libertarian principle that freebies in life almost invariably bring with them a dehumanizing effect on their beneficiaries.
Two months ago I became a former employee of YMCA. I started off at the South Oakland Family YMCA in Royal Oak, Michigan, in 2003 and then was hired at the Lima Family YMCA in 2007. In the nearly 7 1/2 years I was a part of YMCA I have enjoyed the opportunity to see the good things the organization does for the communities its branches serve. Even after parting ways, I will continue to be a proponent of it.
As any YMCA employee can verify for you, one of the more popular benefits of working there is the free membership. Last June, when I was called back to work at Honda's engine plant in Anna, my supervisor – who oversees the Lima Y's fitness center – said he would be willing to keep me on payroll as a substitute so I could continue to enjoy a membership there at no cost.
In case you are one of the few readers who is not aware, I was the Libertarian Party's candidate in Ohio's 4th congressional district race for 2010. Also, my now-former Y supervisor is an ardent Progressive Liberal.
I'm also a weight-lifting junkie.
Well, as the months progressed after my return to (and then second layoff in September from) Honda and as the campaign entered the homestretch toward the November 2 election, he began pestering me more and more often about subbing at the fitness desk. He became especially persistent in October, roughly three week before the election.
On one occasion he called me on the road while I was out campaigning in Wapakoneta and left a voicemail message to call him back. Since I was on the campaign trail and preparing to participate in a meet-the-candidates event hosted by the Auglaize County Patriots, I made the executive decision to wait until the morning to return his call.
The next day, I awoke extra early and decided to head to the Y for a good hard workout. That evening was the first public debate with Representative Jim Jordan and I wanted to enjoy a healthy surge of endorphins before campaigning some more and preparing one last time for the debate.
When I arrived, there was the Fitness Supervisor covering for the early-morning staffer. Since I had not returned his call as promptly as he felt I should have he opted to confront and lecture me on the subject in front of several members. The fact I was out campaigning and was not in a position to call back until rather late in the evening mattered none in the conversation.
I ended-up leaving the gym even more stressed-out than I already was.
Adding to the bizarreness of the day, while I was at the auditorium on the OSU-Lima campus waiting for the debate to commence, I got a call. It was a local number but one I didn't recognize. Thinking it might be election related I decided to answer: and it was one of my coworkers asking me to sub for her the very next morning as our supervisor had suggested she call me first.
With the debate about to start in six minutes and out of the shear surprise of being hit with this at that particular moment, I quickly made another executive decision: I said, "No."
While I did come in and sub on one Saturday during that time span to keep the hounds at bay and there are even more details of this story with which to bore readers, cutting to the chase the nagging and pestering curiously came to an end on November 3.
In late October I had returned to work at Honda yet again and I did sub for a coworker a couple of times during the annual Christmas shutdown at the plant in order to maintain my employment status and enjoy the free gym access. But, in late February I received one more call from that supervisor. He simply phoned to say since I had not "subbed in a really long time" I was being taken off the payroll the next day.
If you've stuck with this treatise this far, I’m sure the obvious question would be, "Why didn’t you quit after the first time he gave you grief?"
You wouldn’t be the first person to ask me that. My answer consistently has been, "I wanted to keep the free membership."
During the stretches I was laid-off I could not afford a gym membership. Heck, there were stretches of time while I was working when I couldn't afford a gym membership.
But, after that last phone call, I made one more executive decision and checked-out Westwood Tennis & Fitness Center. I knew the first day into my one week trial access I was going to join there. After signing-up and making the first membership payment, it was during my second workout when my libertarian epiphany occurred to me.
All those months I was willing to tolerate unprofessional behavior, mild yet tempered hostility, condescension, an occasional hateful look, and the general indignity of the situation… And for what?
Simply put, I had gotten used to enjoying what amounted to a handout.
By that point, during that second paid-for workout at Westwood, I realized what it was beyond being in a superior facility that made working-out there so enjoyable. I could be there without having to wonder if I was going to be questioned about the frequency of my visits. I could go there without anyone really caring who I was or why I was there. And, I could go there because I had paid for my access to it just like everyone else in there.
And you know what: that last one just felt so good.
So, if you're a Libertarian like me and you're dealing with someone who rolls their eyes at you when you discuss how government assistance leaves recipients trapped in their situation and forced to accept the inevitable indignity of it, tell them to talk to someone who – in a roundabout sense – knows what you’re trying to convey.
In my own strange and peculiar way, I've been there.
With that, I offer the following thought despite its mild redundancy to the opening paragraph.
It is one thing to observe the multifarious orders of business which constitute government – relying heavily on standard and online media for information as well as other opinion analysis – and then publish a semi-disconnected perspective on it all.
It is quite another to experience something in life which is tremendously analogous to a topic of particular ire to libertarians and other small-government proponents: handouts and public entitlements.
While it has taken me a couple of months to finally get around to this topic, and it goes hand-in-hand well with a previous blog entry, this is a personal experience which reinforces a core libertarian principle that freebies in life almost invariably bring with them a dehumanizing effect on their beneficiaries.
Two months ago I became a former employee of YMCA. I started off at the South Oakland Family YMCA in Royal Oak, Michigan, in 2003 and then was hired at the Lima Family YMCA in 2007. In the nearly 7 1/2 years I was a part of YMCA I have enjoyed the opportunity to see the good things the organization does for the communities its branches serve. Even after parting ways, I will continue to be a proponent of it.
As any YMCA employee can verify for you, one of the more popular benefits of working there is the free membership. Last June, when I was called back to work at Honda's engine plant in Anna, my supervisor – who oversees the Lima Y's fitness center – said he would be willing to keep me on payroll as a substitute so I could continue to enjoy a membership there at no cost.
In case you are one of the few readers who is not aware, I was the Libertarian Party's candidate in Ohio's 4th congressional district race for 2010. Also, my now-former Y supervisor is an ardent Progressive Liberal.
I'm also a weight-lifting junkie.
Well, as the months progressed after my return to (and then second layoff in September from) Honda and as the campaign entered the homestretch toward the November 2 election, he began pestering me more and more often about subbing at the fitness desk. He became especially persistent in October, roughly three week before the election.
On one occasion he called me on the road while I was out campaigning in Wapakoneta and left a voicemail message to call him back. Since I was on the campaign trail and preparing to participate in a meet-the-candidates event hosted by the Auglaize County Patriots, I made the executive decision to wait until the morning to return his call.
The next day, I awoke extra early and decided to head to the Y for a good hard workout. That evening was the first public debate with Representative Jim Jordan and I wanted to enjoy a healthy surge of endorphins before campaigning some more and preparing one last time for the debate.
When I arrived, there was the Fitness Supervisor covering for the early-morning staffer. Since I had not returned his call as promptly as he felt I should have he opted to confront and lecture me on the subject in front of several members. The fact I was out campaigning and was not in a position to call back until rather late in the evening mattered none in the conversation.
I ended-up leaving the gym even more stressed-out than I already was.
Adding to the bizarreness of the day, while I was at the auditorium on the OSU-Lima campus waiting for the debate to commence, I got a call. It was a local number but one I didn't recognize. Thinking it might be election related I decided to answer: and it was one of my coworkers asking me to sub for her the very next morning as our supervisor had suggested she call me first.
With the debate about to start in six minutes and out of the shear surprise of being hit with this at that particular moment, I quickly made another executive decision: I said, "No."
While I did come in and sub on one Saturday during that time span to keep the hounds at bay and there are even more details of this story with which to bore readers, cutting to the chase the nagging and pestering curiously came to an end on November 3.
In late October I had returned to work at Honda yet again and I did sub for a coworker a couple of times during the annual Christmas shutdown at the plant in order to maintain my employment status and enjoy the free gym access. But, in late February I received one more call from that supervisor. He simply phoned to say since I had not "subbed in a really long time" I was being taken off the payroll the next day.
If you've stuck with this treatise this far, I’m sure the obvious question would be, "Why didn’t you quit after the first time he gave you grief?"
You wouldn’t be the first person to ask me that. My answer consistently has been, "I wanted to keep the free membership."
During the stretches I was laid-off I could not afford a gym membership. Heck, there were stretches of time while I was working when I couldn't afford a gym membership.
But, after that last phone call, I made one more executive decision and checked-out Westwood Tennis & Fitness Center. I knew the first day into my one week trial access I was going to join there. After signing-up and making the first membership payment, it was during my second workout when my libertarian epiphany occurred to me.
All those months I was willing to tolerate unprofessional behavior, mild yet tempered hostility, condescension, an occasional hateful look, and the general indignity of the situation… And for what?
Simply put, I had gotten used to enjoying what amounted to a handout.
By that point, during that second paid-for workout at Westwood, I realized what it was beyond being in a superior facility that made working-out there so enjoyable. I could be there without having to wonder if I was going to be questioned about the frequency of my visits. I could go there without anyone really caring who I was or why I was there. And, I could go there because I had paid for my access to it just like everyone else in there.
And you know what: that last one just felt so good.
So, if you're a Libertarian like me and you're dealing with someone who rolls their eyes at you when you discuss how government assistance leaves recipients trapped in their situation and forced to accept the inevitable indignity of it, tell them to talk to someone who – in a roundabout sense – knows what you’re trying to convey.
In my own strange and peculiar way, I've been there.
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Government, my driver's license, and the wonderful world of unintended consequences
Below is a letter I e-mailed recently to Ohio General Assembly Senator Keith Faber (12th Senate District) and later modified slightly and sent to Representative John Adams (78th House District). Let's see if either legislator acknowledges it.
Dear Sen. Faber,
I called your Celina office a few days ago and relayed the points below to your staffer there (I believe his name was Joe[?]), and he advised me to send you an e-mail detailing my concerns.
Two Fridays ago, my wife and I went to the local Bureau of Motor Vehicles office here in Lima to get new licenses. We had just moved earlier in the week and wanted to get that done promptly.
Much to our surprise, we were turned away because we lacked proof we reside at our new address. The employee at the BMV was very cordial and let us know this was a relatively new development in Ohio within the last year and the new stipulations require we furnish a piece of official mail with our names and new address such as a bank statement or utility bill.
This is the part that puzzles us: historically, one’s driver’s license or state ID serves as proof of residency for the above functions in society. Equally perplexing is the fact our recently inked lease for the duplex we’re renting is not on the list of acceptable proof of residency.
Now begins our catch-22: our bank will not change the address for our checking account until we are able to furnish new IDs with that update. To reiterate the irony, we need an item such as a mailed bank statement with our new address on it to prove we have moved into our new home and get our new licenses but our bank requires new licenses before it will enter our new address into our account information.
So far, this merely is the inconvenience side of the issue. Even more important to consider are the unintended consequences of the new BMV policy.
Before going any further, I would like to state I get why this was implemented. First, I know Ohio has a growing illegal alien problem that is taxing the state’s resources and I can see how this would be a potentially effective means of combating it. Also, it is easy to recognize the policy is meant to be a tool for thwarting voter fraud.
But, do those two efforts outweigh the predicament in which Ohio residents – who are disabled or caught-up in the severely adverse effects of the recession – are being placed?
My wife is disabled. Simply getting to the BMV and waiting in line for a new license is very physically taxing on her. Still, her situation does not present the obstacles to personal mobility faced by many disabled and elderly Ohioans – especially those dependent upon transportation assistance.
On another personal note, I am reminded of our experience when I was laid-off from my job in February 2009 at the peak of the current recession. Without employment, we could no longer afford the rent at our residence at the time and had to move-in with my wife’s family. Since all the bills there were in their names we had no means of proving we lived at that address. Had the new BMV policy been in place then, we would have spent months waiting for the ability to update our address with the state of Ohio.
When you couple those two situations (economically displaced residents and the transportation limitations of the elderly and disabled) with the fact state law requires residents to update our addresses within 30 days of moving before incurring a penalty it becomes clear many of us will invariably be caught between a rock and a hard place with little or no means to resolve this dilemma.
I do not know if the BMV policy was enacted via legislation or was set through the internal bureaucracy of the BMV or Ohio Department of Public Safety. If it was passed as a new law, my request would be to please consider my concerns above and quickly pursue a repeal of it out of consideration of the unintended consequences it is creating for so many Ohioans. If this policy was established internally, it is my hope you and other lawmakers in the General Assembly would lobby Governor Kasich’s office to issue a directive to ODPS Director Kyle Dupler and BMV Registrar Mike Rankin to reverse this harmful policy.
Thank you for your time and consideration and Happy Easter.
Sincerely,
Don Kissick
Dear Sen. Faber,
I called your Celina office a few days ago and relayed the points below to your staffer there (I believe his name was Joe[?]), and he advised me to send you an e-mail detailing my concerns.
Two Fridays ago, my wife and I went to the local Bureau of Motor Vehicles office here in Lima to get new licenses. We had just moved earlier in the week and wanted to get that done promptly.
Much to our surprise, we were turned away because we lacked proof we reside at our new address. The employee at the BMV was very cordial and let us know this was a relatively new development in Ohio within the last year and the new stipulations require we furnish a piece of official mail with our names and new address such as a bank statement or utility bill.
This is the part that puzzles us: historically, one’s driver’s license or state ID serves as proof of residency for the above functions in society. Equally perplexing is the fact our recently inked lease for the duplex we’re renting is not on the list of acceptable proof of residency.
Now begins our catch-22: our bank will not change the address for our checking account until we are able to furnish new IDs with that update. To reiterate the irony, we need an item such as a mailed bank statement with our new address on it to prove we have moved into our new home and get our new licenses but our bank requires new licenses before it will enter our new address into our account information.
So far, this merely is the inconvenience side of the issue. Even more important to consider are the unintended consequences of the new BMV policy.
Before going any further, I would like to state I get why this was implemented. First, I know Ohio has a growing illegal alien problem that is taxing the state’s resources and I can see how this would be a potentially effective means of combating it. Also, it is easy to recognize the policy is meant to be a tool for thwarting voter fraud.
But, do those two efforts outweigh the predicament in which Ohio residents – who are disabled or caught-up in the severely adverse effects of the recession – are being placed?
My wife is disabled. Simply getting to the BMV and waiting in line for a new license is very physically taxing on her. Still, her situation does not present the obstacles to personal mobility faced by many disabled and elderly Ohioans – especially those dependent upon transportation assistance.
On another personal note, I am reminded of our experience when I was laid-off from my job in February 2009 at the peak of the current recession. Without employment, we could no longer afford the rent at our residence at the time and had to move-in with my wife’s family. Since all the bills there were in their names we had no means of proving we lived at that address. Had the new BMV policy been in place then, we would have spent months waiting for the ability to update our address with the state of Ohio.
When you couple those two situations (economically displaced residents and the transportation limitations of the elderly and disabled) with the fact state law requires residents to update our addresses within 30 days of moving before incurring a penalty it becomes clear many of us will invariably be caught between a rock and a hard place with little or no means to resolve this dilemma.
I do not know if the BMV policy was enacted via legislation or was set through the internal bureaucracy of the BMV or Ohio Department of Public Safety. If it was passed as a new law, my request would be to please consider my concerns above and quickly pursue a repeal of it out of consideration of the unintended consequences it is creating for so many Ohioans. If this policy was established internally, it is my hope you and other lawmakers in the General Assembly would lobby Governor Kasich’s office to issue a directive to ODPS Director Kyle Dupler and BMV Registrar Mike Rankin to reverse this harmful policy.
Thank you for your time and consideration and Happy Easter.
Sincerely,
Don Kissick
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