Monthly Archives: March 2011

The Meaning of Life

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I listened to a radio conversation this morning. I don’t remember how it started. The essence was that over half of the population of the US received government paychecks in one form or another. The majority of the recipients did so through some “entitlement” program.

The conversation morphed into the lifestyles of those recipients—what did they do with their time while sucking on the government teat. Studies had found—not much.

The recipients were broken down into several categories. Those on Social Security over the age of 55 were excluded for obvious reasons. They were about half of the total people. The remaining half, multi-millions of people, just existed, except for a small minority. That minority, on an individual basis, did not remain on government assistance for very long. A few years at most.

But it was that other group, those who just existed, that was the subject of the discussion. The discussion was not on the justification of the government payments. It was on the lifestyle of the recipients and the difficulties they faced.

The bottom line was that this group of people appeared to have no goals, no vision for their lives. The overall quality of their life was poor, not for a lack of funding or resources but as the people themselves stated, “My life is meaningless!”

That is a very good question, one that has been asked as long as Man has had language and the ability to look further than the next meal.

What is the meaning of Life? That question evokes a number of responses. Many will state that the meaning of life is a relationship with God. I agree with that but there are other reasons as valid for those who do not subscribe to a God-filled world-view.

I remember a statement from my college philosophy prof. It was the only thing I remember of him. The meaning of life is having something to do, something to achieve, something to look forward to. A future-ward view, he said.

I can agree with that statement too. When I was working, my work-week regularly exceeded 60 hours, sometimes more. My day would start early to allow me to speak with suppliers in the UK and extend well into the evening to allow me to converse with our construction crew in New Zealand and Australia. I was responsible for multi-million dollar projects from coast-to-coast and beyond our shores.

I had great satisfaction doing a job well, meeting requirements and delivering a finished project on-time and on or under budget. My life was problem solving. As I grew older and more experienced, the problems grew in size and complexity as did the stress.

I had several methods to combat stress. Many, like reading fiction, I retain today. But the one that worked best for me was having something to look forward to—a vacation trip, an activity, a movie (I was a Star Wars and Indiana Jones fan,) something that I could plan and take my mind off the current job at hand.

The critical component was judging what was truly important in your life, not to mistake the means for the end. I saw so many make that mistake and ruin their lives and those around them. I lived amongst workaholics and the divorce rate was astounding. They had lost sight of the final goal.

So many lost that view or never discovered exactly what the final goal was for them. I’m reminded of a scene from the movie City Slickers. Jack Palance played an old cowboy. Billy Crystal played a stressed-out urbanite.

Crystal: “Curly, what’s the meaning of life?”

Palance: “The meaning of life (holding up one finger) is one thing.”

Crystal: “What’s that one thing?”

Palance: “That’s for you to find out.”

That one scene holds so many truths. A large segment of our population has never made that discovery. Nor have they ever desired to make the effort. They have been covered, supported by the government not only all their life, but for generations before them. They exist for the here and now. Maybe tomorrow if that’s the day the government refreshes their debit cards.

A meaningless life. Not because they’ve had that life imposed on them but because they’ve never made the effort to better their life. Like Lotus-eaters, life is too easy. It’s too hard to make goals, to achieve. It’s easier to be numbed through alcohol and drugs to relieve the tedium.

I can’t say I pity those folks. They’ve done it to themselves. They had numerous opportunities to escape and have let those opportunities slide by. However poor it may be, everyone has the opportunity for an education through high school. Yet, many drop out as soon as they can and that act shuts them out of further opportunities for betterment.

One day, perhaps one soon, the gravy-train will cease. No more government money. No more life without effort nor without responsibility. The change for them will be horrifying.

I can not block that occurance, nor would I want to. Each of us is responsible for our own lives, our livelihood, our own welfare and that of our families. The public trough is drying and will be empty. What will these people do?

We’ve seen some of that in Wisconsin. The public employee unions and the leadership are a part of this group who’ve lost sight of their goals. They believe if they cry and scream, riot, ignore their responsibility, they can continue to live off others.

They lost.

The coming years, as trough after trough goes dry will see more riots, more strikes from a dying philosophy. It won’t be pretty. They, as a group, have no goals other than to maintain their current existence. They’ve not found that “one thing” that makes their lives meaningful other than maintaining the status quo.

For those of us who oppose this parasitic lifestyle, we must be strong, vigilant, and unswerving. To do otherwise is too terrible to contemplate, not only for us but for our coming generations.

We have discovered that “one thing.” It may be more than just “one thing”, it may be many. We have a goal, a destination, a completion to work towards.

We have something to look forward to and that is the One Thing.

Late post today

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Mrs. Crucis and I have some running around to do this morning. I’ll post later today.

Y’all have a great day!

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Never, Never Trust a Democrat!

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It’s been clear for decades but it seems more evidence appears every day—the democrat party is a clear and present danger to the survival of our nation. Note I didn’t say survival of our government. The democrat party as the apparent political arm of a number of special interests, is not motivated to represent the people, but of representing potent special interest groups and individuals AND maintaining their political control of the government.

The democrats will demonize their opponents, lie, commit fraud and subvert the interests of the nation to maintain power. An example of this is Chuck Shumer’s inadvertent exposure of his instructions to some new democrat pols in Washington.

Sen. Chuck Schumer calls GOP ‘extreme’ during Dem pep talk

POST WIRE SERVICES
Last Updated: 6:27 PM, March 29, 2011
Posted: 4:02 PM, March 29, 2011
Call it Sen. Chuck Schumer unplugged.
Unaware that reporters were listening in, Schumer put his foot in his mouth this morning during a conference call — instructing other Democratic senators to call Republicans “extreme” when it comes to proposing budget cuts.
Moments before the start of the call, Schumer — not aware that many of the reporters were already on the line — went into spin doctor mode, instructing his fellow senators on how to talk to the media about the federal budget.
“I always use the word extreme,” Schumer told Sens. Barbara Boxer, Benjamin Cardin, Thomas Carper and Richard Blumenthal. “That is what the caucus instructed me to use this week.”
Boxer (D-Calif.), Cardin (D-Maryland), Carper (D-Del.) and Blumenthal (D-Conn.) listened as Schumer told them to paint House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) as someone who had been backed into a corner by the Tea Party.
About a minute into Schumer’s instructions, he apparently became aware that reporters were on the line.
What ensued were a few moments of silence.
Once the call began in earnest seconds later, the Democratic lawmakers were on message.
“We are urging Mr. Boehner to abandon the extreme right wing,” said Boxer.
This as Capitol Hill rhetoric reached new levels of ugliness as negotiations over some semblance of a federal budget gave way to finger-pointing, with Democrats blaming Tea Party freshmen for a potential government shutdown and Republicans calling those claims a fantasy.
Blame the Tea Parties.
Typical. This quote from Schumer is just the most recent lie coming from the democrats. Dick Durbin claims the Social Security doesn’t contribute to our deficit spending. He said this after the GAO announced that payments by Social Security exceeded the taxes received in 2010.
According to the 2010 Summary of the Trustees Report, Social Security expenditures were expected to exceed tax receipts in 2010 for the first time since 1983.
And the democrats aren’t alone in this. There are those, called “the Ruling Class” by the American Spectator, some who claim Republican credentials, such as Scott Brown from Massachusetts, the Maine RINO twins, and Lindsey Graham, who actively help the dems whenever they think they can do so surreptitiously.
Even dems at the local level can’t be trusted. I posted an example of this earlier this week.
As many have said, “Liberalism is a mental disease.” With so many dem pols being incapable of speaking the truth, so many dems who lie even when it is so apparently a lie, such as that statement by Dick Durbin, yes, liberalism truly is a mental disease.
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Never, Never Trust a Democrat!

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It’s been clear for decades but it seems more evidence appears every day—the democrat party is a clear and present danger to the survival of our nation. Note I didn’t say survival of our government. The democrat party as the apparent political arm of a number of special interests, is not motivated to represent the people, but of representing potent special interest groups and individuals AND maintaining their political control of the government.

The democrats will demonize their opponents, lie, commit fraud and subvert the interests of the nation to maintain power. An example of this is Chuck Shumer’s inadvertent exposure of his instructions to some new democrat pols in Washington.

Sen. Chuck Schumer calls GOP ‘extreme’ during Dem pep talk

POST WIRE SERVICES
Last Updated: 6:27 PM, March 29, 2011
Posted: 4:02 PM, March 29, 2011
Call it Sen. Chuck Schumer unplugged.
Unaware that reporters were listening in, Schumer put his foot in his mouth this morning during a conference call — instructing other Democratic senators to call Republicans “extreme” when it comes to proposing budget cuts.
Moments before the start of the call, Schumer — not aware that many of the reporters were already on the line — went into spin doctor mode, instructing his fellow senators on how to talk to the media about the federal budget.
“I always use the word extreme,” Schumer told Sens. Barbara Boxer, Benjamin Cardin, Thomas Carper and Richard Blumenthal. “That is what the caucus instructed me to use this week.”
Boxer (D-Calif.), Cardin (D-Maryland), Carper (D-Del.) and Blumenthal (D-Conn.) listened as Schumer told them to paint House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) as someone who had been backed into a corner by the Tea Party.
About a minute into Schumer’s instructions, he apparently became aware that reporters were on the line.
What ensued were a few moments of silence.
Once the call began in earnest seconds later, the Democratic lawmakers were on message.
“We are urging Mr. Boehner to abandon the extreme right wing,” said Boxer.
This as Capitol Hill rhetoric reached new levels of ugliness as negotiations over some semblance of a federal budget gave way to finger-pointing, with Democrats blaming Tea Party freshmen for a potential government shutdown and Republicans calling those claims a fantasy.
Blame the Tea Parties.
Typical. This quote from Schumer is just the most recent lie coming from the democrats. Dick Durbin claims the Social Security doesn’t contribute to our deficit spending. He said this after the GAO announced that payments by Social Security exceeded the taxes received in 2010.
According to the 2010 Summary of the Trustees Report, Social Security expenditures were expected to exceed tax receipts in 2010 for the first time since 1983.
And the democrats aren’t alone in this. There are those, called “the Ruling Class” by the American Spectator, some who claim Republican credentials, such as Scott Brown from Massachusetts, the Maine RINO twins, and Lindsey Graham, who actively help the dems whenever they think they can do so surreptitiously.
Even dems at the local level can’t be trusted. I posted an example of this earlier this week.
As many have said, “Liberalism is a mental disease.” With so many dem pols being incapable of speaking the truth, so many dems who lie even when it is so apparently a lie, such as that statement by Dick Durbin, yes, liberalism truly is a mental disease.

John Galt, Part II

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I wrote about John Galt in 2009. It seems appropriate to discuss the concepts of Ayn Rand‘s book again.  Atlas Shrugged will be released across the country in April.  The unions and collectivists are already preparing protests. 

The concepts of put forth by Rand are appearing in real life.  Productive people are leaving the states run by “moochers” and moving to states that allow them to retain their personal freedoms.

Thomas Sowell, writing in the Investors Business Daily, notes the flight of “Galts” as revealed in the 2010 census.

Mass Migration Of America’s Golden Geese

By THOMAS SOWELL Posted 03/28/2011 05:59 PM ET

The latest published data from the 2010 census show how people are moving from place to place within the United States.
In general, people are voting with their feet against places where the liberal, welfare-state policies favored by the intelligentsia are most deeply entrenched.
When you break it down by race and ethnicity, it is all too painfully clear what is happening. Both whites and blacks are leaving California, the poster state for the liberal, welfare-state and nanny-state philosophy.
Whites are also fleeing the big Northeastern liberal, welfare states like Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, as well as the same kinds of states in the Midwest, such as Michigan, Ohio and Illinois.
Although California has long been a prime destination of Asian immigrants and the homes of their descendants, the 2010 census shows a striking increase in the Asian American population of Nevada, more so than any other state. Nevada is adjacent to California but has no income tax or the hostile climate for business that California maintains.
The movement of the black population — especially educated young blacks — is the most striking of all.
In the past, the massive movements of millions of blacks out of the South in the early 20th century was one of the epic migrations of a people — comparable in size with the millions of the Irish who fled the famine in Ireland in the 1840s or the millions of Jews who fled persecution in Eastern Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
In more recent decades, blacks have been moving back to the South, however. While the overall black population of the Northeastern and Midwestern states has not declined in the past 10 years, except in Michigan and Illinois, the net increase of the black population nationwide has increasingly been in the South.
About half of the national growth of the black population took place in the South in the 1970s, two-thirds in the 1990s and three-quarters in the past 10 years.
While the mass migration of blacks out of the South in the early 20th century was to places where there were already established black communities, such as New York, Chicago and Philadelphia, much of the current movement of blacks is away from existing concentrations of black populations.
Blacks are moving to suburbs, and even to cities like Minneapolis. Overall, the racial residential segregation patterns are declining in the great majority of the largest major metropolitan areas.
Among blacks who moved, the proportions who were in their prime — from 20 to 40 years of age — were greater than in the black population at large, and college degrees were more common among them than in the black population at large.
In short, with blacks, as with other racial or ethnic groups, those with better prospects are leaving the states that are repelling their most productive citizens in general with liberal policies.
Detroit is perhaps the most striking example of a once-thriving city ruined by years of liberal social policies.
Before the ghetto riot of 1967, Detroit’s black population had the highest rate of homeownership of any black urban population in the country, and their unemployment rate was just 3.4%. It was not despair that fueled the riot. It was the riot that marked the beginning of the decline of Detroit to its current state of despair.
Detroit’s population today is only half of what it once was, and its most productive people have been the ones who fled.
Treating businesses and affluent people as prey, rather than assets, often pays off politically in the short run — and elections are held in the short run. Killing the goose that lays the golden egg is a viable political strategy.
As whites were the first to start leaving Detroit, then-mayor Coleman Young saw this only as an exodus of people who were likely to vote against him, enhancing his re-election prospects. But what was good for Mayor Young was disastrous for Detroit.
There is a lesson here somewhere, but it is very doubtful if either the intelligentsia or the politicians will learn it.

Election Day: April 5, 2011

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Next week is my local election day for city council and for the local school board. The usual lyin’ libs are running again.

I met one last week. I was pulling out my drive-way when this older “gentleman” appeared suddenly at my passenger door. I had looked all around as I was backing out and didn’t see him anywhere. He walked around to my side and said, after I rolled down the window, “I wanted to introduce myself before you left.” My first thought was that he’d run over, keeping in my blindspot, and risked that I might run over him just to make a political appeal!

He handed me some flyers, spoke his name and asked for my vote. I noticed he was wearing a NRA t-shirt. So I asked, “You’re a NRA member?”

His response started with, “Yeah, but I don’t agree with them on a number of things.”

Alarm bells started ringing in my mind.

There was a charter amendment passed last year that prohibited concealed carry in city buildings. It was advertised misleadingly and was so poorly written that it also prohibited plain-clothed cops from carrying in city buildings too. Also if any uniformed cops had a concealed backup weapon, they couldn’t enter any city buildings either. Note, the police headquarters is a city building too.

I asked this candidate if he favored repealing that charter amendment? He said, “No. It’s too dangerous to allow weapons on city property.”

Ah ha!

What we have here, folks, is a lib trying to use the NRA to masquerade as a ‘Pub or conservative. Typical. I discovered later this person was our local equivalent to Harold Stassen.

I returned his campaign flyers and told him he’d not get my vote. I said I favored the repeal of the charter amendment and that I also had a concealed carry permit. His eyes widened a bit. I’m not sure if it was because I’d just told him he’d lost my vote or if it was the usual lib response to anyone willing and able to defend themselves. He also wasn’t too observant or he’d have seen my Life NRA license plate holder on my Tahoe.

I won’t say who this person was other than his initials are RH. I’ve since had a campaign sign of Ryan Wescoat, his opponent, placed in my yard. Ryan is the imcumbent. He was appointed to complete the term of a conservative councilman who ran, successfully, for a county office. Ryan is one of our local Young Republicans and has good conservative credentials.

I urge you to vote for him for Raymore City Council.

What!!! (with Addendum)

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My muse is still hiding in the recesses of my basement/office. I’ve so much junk it’s difficult to find anything.  I still haven’t found the recoil spring from my Officer sized 1911 that was launched into somewhere in 2005.

I’ll continue the search. In the mean time, here’s an item that frosted my cake this morning.  

When it comes to taxes, the FedGov can always find something to tax.

CBO: Taxing mileage a ‘practical option’ for revenue enhancement

By Pete Kasperowicz – 03/24/11 04:17 PM ET
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) this week released a report that said taxing people based on how many miles they drive is a possible option for raising new revenues and that these taxes could be used to offset the costs of highway maintenance at a time when federal funds are short.
The report discussed the proposal in great detail, including the development of technology that would allow total vehicle miles traveled (VMT) to be tracked, reported and taxed, as well as the pros and cons of mandating the installation of this technology in all vehicles.
“In the past, the efficiency costs of implementing a system of VMT charges — particularly the costs of users’ time for slowing and queuing at tollbooths — would clearly have outweighed the potential benefits from more efficient use of highway capacity,” CBO wrote. “Now, electronic metering and billing are making per-mile charges a practical option.”
The report was requested by Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), who held a hearing on transportation funding in early March. In that hearing, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said the Obama administration is hoping to spend $556 billion over the next six years, much of which would go to federal transportation improvement projects.

Conrad said in response that federal funds are tight, and in asking for recommendations on how to raise that money, he noted the possibility of a VMT tax as a way to solve the problem of collecting less in taxes as people move to more fuel-efficient vehicles.

“Do we do gas tax?” Conrad asked. “Do we move to some kind of an assessment that is based on how many miles vehicles go, so that we capture revenue from those who are going to be using the roads who aren’t going to be paying any gas tax, or very little, with hybrids and electric cars?”
Conrad argued some recommendation should be made by his committee on these issues when the Senate considers a transportation spending bill later this year.
CBO’s report stressed it was making no recommendations but seemed to support a VMT tax as a more accurate way of having drivers pay for the costs of highway maintenance. The report said miles driven is a larger factor in highway repairs than fuel consumption and suggested that having drivers pay for the real costs of highways “would involve imposing a combination of fuel taxes and per-mile charges.”
But CBO’s assessment of “costs” was broader than just those costs associated with maintaining highway systems.

I noticed this report was requested by a democrat.  It’s not enough that we’re taxed on gas at the state and federal level, that we’re taxed on tires at the state and federal level, now that want to stick us with a mileage tax.  Just think of the transportation cost increase that would create. Remember—everything you buy at Walmart, Target, at your local grocer, comes in by truck.  If there is anything better aimed at damaging, if not destroying, our economy, the democrats haven’t found it yet.

Addendum:  I just came across this cartoon by Ramirez and just had to add it. It doesn’t follow today’s theme, but it’s my blog so I can break my own rules—so there!