Monthly Archives: July 2012

What kind of Government do we deserve?

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I keep thinking that what we really should have is an honest groups of representative who are in there as a public service, not a career.

In 2010 I watched a primary debate, for Governor, between Rick Scott and Bill McCollum.  I was not impressed with either of these gentlemen, and would later vote for Alex Sink, who did impress me…  In the debate McCollum hit Scoot on two things.  The first was his running of Columbia/HCA how the company incurred the largest fines ever against a healthcare company – ever.- for Medicaid fraud, double billing, and whatever.  Scott admitted that he was in charge but said the problem was that he did not have enough auditors to oversee the way the billing was done.  In an article by the Gulf coast Business Review(?) the writer make the statement that these billing practices were common practice, so their excuse was “everyone else was doing it”.  Yeah, that make it O.K. right?  The second item that he hammered him on had to do with the lawsuits that were brought against Solantic, the second healthcare company that Scott helped found.

My point here is not about whether, or not, Rick Scott was a crook but, this : if Rick Scott was really as dishonest as Bill McCollum said he was, they why did Bill McCollum subsequently back him for Governor?  If Scott was an honest businessman then McCollum LIED about his record.  If McCollum told the truth then shouldn’t he have refused to endorse Scott?  The answer to both of these should have been a yes.

Then again, Scott was a fellow Republican running against a Democrat and, honesty, in politics, is often the first casualty.

There is a “truth in advertising” law but, not a “truth in politics”..

Let’s look at who we put in the Senate, in the same year, Marco Rubio.  It has been reported that the first thing he did on getting into office was to spend $150,000 to refurbish his office.  He had stated that he is probably the only Senator who has not paid off his student loans from 1996…  Even though his income, for several years, was in the $300,000 – $400,000 range.

This is one of the people we send to Washington to vote on our budget?  He can’t even live with in his own means.

We send the dishonest and big spenders to represent us, and then we wonder why we don’t get the kind of government we want.  Instead we get the kind of government we deserve.

So let us spend less time listening to the politicians, and more time watching what they DO.

Thank you,

That Joe Guy.

 

Scams

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It is probably just me… but when I see some add that offers, say a hat, for free it seems that all I would have to do is tell them where to send the hat…  Sure there might be a shipping fee, for the cost of sending the hat.

If I see an advertisement for a free hat, with the purchase of a vehicle, I understand that the price of the hat is the cost of the vehicle, and they could have written the ad to say something like”free vehicle with the purchase of a single hat”, and that would be just as truthful.  That would, of course, make for a really expensive hat.  They like to use the word “FREE” as it then seems that you are not paying anything for the hat, or whatever.  More truthful would be to say “at no extra cost”.  That doesn’t give the same impression though.

Then there is the offer of a free gift card, or maybe an iPod, iPad, or other expensive product, and all you have to do is answer a few question in their survey.  So you click on it, and start the survey.

They ask a couple of simple questions, a survey that might be useful to somebody, and then maybe the have you pick out the product you want.  That done you go to the real point of the thing, the survey, for real?  There is usually a disclaimer that says something like ”participation required”.  What they mean is that when you are picking between all the wonderful things you might be interested in, or not, if you want the product you picked out then you must subscribe to several of their offerings.  There are normally several different column, much like chinese food menus, from which you must pick a specified number of offers.  That is a scam.

If you have to buy something then the product is not free.  This is less honest than a time share luncheon, where you have to listen to a sales spiel to get that free lunch, which is why it is often said that “there is no such thing as a free lunch“.

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The Never Ending War.

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We prohibit addictive drugs.  We have done this for years.  Why?

When it was discovered that laudanum, for example, was a highly addictive, and destructive, drug, it was prohibited.

At one time the United States saw alcohol pretty much the same way, and went so far as to prohibit it in a constitutional  amendment.  They eventually understood that this approach would not work, and it was repealed.  This time came to be called the Prohibition Era, and is credited with the rise of organized crime.

For that period of time alcohol was seen as a dangerous drug.  Users would often become addicted to it, and their whole life would fall apart, so we had to protect them from themselves, and alcohol.  That might have been nice, if it had worked.  The trouble was that people gathered at “speak easies” where they could drink the forbidden elixir and mingle with both the people who made the beverage, people like Al Capone, and the cops who were supposed to be rooting it out, and destroying it.

So, we had the illegal alcohol, the gangs who made it and fought each other to control their areas, the cops who tried to destroy it, and then we had the cops who got paid to protect it.  Somewhere in the mix we had the people who go caught in the cross fire. as the gangs, with their gang wars, shot up neighborhoods in an effort to get rid of the

North Side Gang members following the St. Vale...

North Side Gang members following the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

competition, or even killed people who had seen them kill rival gang members, or even other witnesses.  Crime was rampant, and still the alcohol came.  Criminals became celebrities and acted as such.  More people died, and still the alcohol continued to enter the country.

Prohibition did not work, and so we quit it, at least for alcohol.

We still have prohibition for other drugs. We also still have the gangs who manufacture them, transport them into this country, and then sell them to people who are adversely effected by their use.  We also have the occasional law enforcement official who gets paid to protect them. For a number of years now we have had a “war on drugs”, and still they come.  Thousands of people have been killed in the gang violence in Mexico.  Even here, in the U.S. we have people killed in gang violence as they vie for who will control the streets.  Who are we protecting?  The drug users?  The pedestrian who get shot up by gang members, who don’t bother to aim, as attempt to get rid of their competition.

Is the protection of people who take drugs really worth the death of any law enforcement officer? We have mourned the loss of military people who gave their lives in our wars but, at least those wars come to an end, even if we lost,  the problem with the “War on Drugs” is that no matter how many people are killed, either the users, the cops, the gang members, or just the bystanders, the drugs just keep coming, and the criminals just keep making money.

This is the WAR that never ends.

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Should you be able to legally Defend yourself, or others?

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Martin Grave

Martin Grave (Photo credit: Robert of Fairfax)

The Trayvon Martin case prompted a new look at the Stand Your Ground Laws, and specifically the one in Florida..

One of the questions that come up is this : Should Neighborhood Watch people be armed?  Are they Law Enforcement?  No. They are observers, and therefore they should “observe and report” only..  This means that they should NOT CONFRONT suspects who might be committing crimes.  Does this mean that, as a Neighborhood Watch member they give up their rights as a citizen?  NO!  For seven years I was in Air Force Security Police where we were taught that while the Posse Comitatus act barred Federal Troops from enforcing Civil law we still retained our right as Citizens..  What did this mean?  Lets say I was at a base that conducted town patrols.  While I could not be dispatched to a robbery, as that would be construed as Enforcing Civil Law, I could act if I just happened to be out front when the bad guys came out.  I still had my rights of citizens Arrest.  Does this mean that the people who wish to make their neighborhoods safe have to give up that same right just because the joined a Neighborhood Watch?  I don’t think that should be a question.  IF they were to see a Felony taking place they should be able to act.  Of course, since they are not Law Enforcement, and therefore they are not protected by the same laws as REAL LAW ENFORCEMENT officers, they have to be correct, or they could be charged, for arresting  someone who turns out to not be a real felon.  I used to tell some of the people I worked with, in the private security field, that if they want to play cop they have to know more about the law than the cops do, as they can be arrested for false arrest, or imprisonment, so the best thing for them to do is “observe and report”.  As an A.F.S.P. we were told that the first things we were to do was 1 Detect, 2. Report, and then 3. neutralize the threat.  The first two were the most important, as someone other then you must know about the threat, and be able to respond.

So, while they might still have the rights of a private citizen, to arrest for a felony, the best action for them is to “observe and report”, and let the people with the express authority make the arrest.  If Mr. Zimmerman had seen an actual felony, or had a probable cause to believe he had seen a felony act being committed, it might be different.  Still the best thing would be to stay our of the way, and let Law Enforcement handle the situation, not go charging in.

There is just as much evidence to show that Trayvon Martin was defending himself, and if that is true then Zimmerman is the aggressor as there has so far been not proof of a felony action on Martin’s part.

The Sanford Police would have been with in their rights to arrest Zimmerman.  We might never know what really happened but, I do not believe the ”Stand Your Ground” law applied to him.

Maybe the law needs to be clarified.  What we don’t need is to take away a citizen’s right to defend themselves, or others, or to prevent the commission of a violent crime.  What we do need is for the law to clearly explain under what circumstances you are allowed to not be the victim.

If we wind up going back to the days when you were required to retreat from a threat, we might face the possibility that a citizen who is forced to protect himself would become the criminal, and that would be a real crime.

 

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Social Security…

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English: Official portrait of US Senator Marco...

English: Official portrait of US Senator Marco Rubio of Florida. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Once upon a time there were people who made a deal with their government.  The people would give a portion of what they made, in income, to the government in exchange for a paycheck when they reached a certain age.

This was called social security.  This was really a continuation of the old idea that a civilization should take care of its seniors.  In this case it would be by extending them an paycheck, to compensate for their year of loyalty.  To do this the government set aside a TRUST fund, which would hold the money that the workers had invested.  It was something like a 401K, only it was with the government, who would hold it in TRUST for the time when they should be able to relax, after years of work.   There was a lot of money invested in this trust fund, and a government that could rarely live within its means soon saw all this money just sitting there.  They started to put BONDs (IOUs) into this fund, so they could use it to fund their overspending.  This was really an IOU.  Over the year the people who thought it was their right to take this money started to call it an entitlement.  They started to tell the people, who had been forced to put money into this fund, that they would not be able to get their agreed upon payment until later, that even thought they had been told they would get these payments at a certain age the age had been moved back, and so they had to work longer.

One of the most common reasons for this was because the people in charge of the funds, the U.S. Congress, could not seem to understand that they should not spend more than they brought in.

Just to give you an example..  Marco Rubio, the now senator from Florida, spent $150,000 to redo his office when he was elected.  A number of year after he was elected, even after several years when te earned $400,000 a year and had not paid off a $150,000 student loan, he talked about fiscal responsibility as if the really understood the concept.  These are the people who decide our fate.

On an aside.  My brother got drafted as soon as college was no longer an exemption from the draft, and decided to go into the Navy.  He signed a 6 year contract, which stated that after 4 years he would have been given an enlistment bonus.  Then, just before you would have gotten his bonus, the congress decide to do away with it.  The court of appeals, 3 out of 4, decided that since military pay was decided NOT by contract, but by congress, that the U.S. Congress could actually do away with military pay and they would still have to serve.  This from the people who pass laws, such as the equal opportunity act and exempt themselves from the same laws that they apply to others.  They did tell the Navy people they could get out of the contract, if they wished, after the 4 years.  My Brother got out.  So what is the lesson here?  If two people make a contract they have to live up to their side of the bargain, or go to court, unless one side if the Federal Government, in which case they just pass a law that says they don’t have to live up to their contract.

The main point here is that these people, Republican or Democrat, will spend your money in order to keep themselves in power, while YOU are the one who has to live within your means.

I am not a Dittohead but I used to enjoy watching Rush Limbaugh when he was on TV.  One night, while I was watching his show he played a clip of the Clinton Secretary of the Treasury, I think it was Ruben, telling the unions they could not borrow against union pension funds as it was “not your money”.  Rush then pointed out that the U.S. Government was doing the same thing to Social Security, and played a clip of Rubin saying, “it’s NOT YOUR MONEY”.  They never understood the point.

Here is a final thought.  If a lawyer were to borrow from a clients trust account (escrow) he could be disbarred, if congress does it, its business as usual.

We can blame the President for spending the money that the congress give him to spend, and it is we who put them all in office.

So every year, when they tell us we have to work longer, who should WE blame?

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