Stop Pulling the Wagon

EVER WONDER WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO “YOUR” WORLD?

I have not written anything for a while.  In some ways I feel a little like Rip Van Winkle awakening from a long sleep wondering where I am and what has happened to the happy and ordered world I grew up in.

It seems to me that our lives are now ruled by a consortium of Clowns, Criminals and Lunatics.

A  journey through a looking glass into a world where the Lords of Darkness have stolen power and are creating a society where no good deed will go unpunished.

If the United States were the Milky Way Galaxy, then Washington D.C. would be the gravitational heart of that galaxy.

At the heart of  the Milky Way Galaxy there resides a Super-Massive Black Hole.  In space lingo a Black Hole is the collapsed heart of a large star that has compressed into a point where gravity is so intense that everything, including other stars and star stuff,  is sucked in and nothing of any recognized value, not even light, can escape.

Washington D.C. is like that.  A place where our tax dollars get sucked in and nothing of any value can possibly escape.

You know why?  Its because the Clowns, Criminals and Lunatics are busy stirring a big caulderon to turn our tax dollars into a system of Food  Stamps and Flat Screen TV’s to keep the masses complacent.

The Romans first introduced the concept of Bread and Circuses to keep the rabble quiet and content.  The Dark Lords in Washington have only copied them.

What?  Did you expect something creative and original to come out of Washington D.C. ?  Have you forgotten this is the place where 98% of our political leaders give the rest a bad name?

Bob Bandy

Feb. 2013

A KIND OF “WISH LIST”?

If I wanted to design the “perfect” place to live, and, if it did not matter how many folks I managed to infuriate and alienate in the process,  it would look something like this:

1. Government taxes at all levels could not exceed 10%.  I don’t think the government should ask for more than God does.  Everybody would pay the same rate of taxes.  The more you earn, the more you pay but the rate is the same.

2. Government would be forbidden budget deficits unless our nation faced invasion from a hostile foreign enemy.  At the time of this writing I cannot imagine a foreign government that would want to invade our country and assume our debt and problems.

3. All government services, except maybe national defense, would be put out to bid to private industry with specific performance requirements for payment and penalties for poor performance.  We might want to consider contracting out management of our national defense to Israel.

4. Those people and attorneys who file lawsuits and lose their case in court must pay the legal fees of the party they are suing.

5.  Convicted Felons:  First time offenders would spend their time in prison stateside in a cell watching and listening to endless re-runs of “Barney the Purple Dinosaur” (I love you, you love me etc.). Any time outside the cell would be in a physical labor environment (in pink jumpsuits).  Second time offenders would earn a trip to spend their time in a Mexican prison.  Three time losers would spend their prison terms in North Korea.  I am sure both Mexico and North Korea would be happy to provide the service at less than half what we taxpayers pay to maintain prisoners.  Surviving felons who commit a fourth offense will be parachuted into Taliban Country in Afghanistan armed with a Bible.

6. “Public” schools would be contracted and attendance based on parental choice of school.  Uniforms and discipline with specific requirements for advancement and graduation.  Students not compliant with specific disciplinary and learning requirements would be placed in alternative career/trade school or military “opportunity” environments.

7.  Those citizens with real, medically diagnosed, physical or mental illness would be provided basic needs which would include medical care.  Drug testing mandatory for all public assistance.

8. Both parents of a child are responsible for providing for the needs of the children they bring into the world.  Public assistance provided only with drug testing and mandatory work requirements.  No food stamp credit cards.  Food provided on the basis of basic dietary requirements.  Violation of the rules would terminate participation in any public program and removal of children to supervised foster care.  Parents who drop out of the program will receive mandatory parental training at the North Korean or Iranian  re-education camp of their choice.

9. All public officials must live under the same laws, regulations and programs (such as Social Security and Healthcare) that they impose on all other citizens.  No exceptions and no exemptions.

10. Public employees would work under specific work contracts with clearly defined and limited benefits including defined retirement (401k type) contribution plans.  No lifetime pension and health care benefits.

I think I will stop here as I have probably managed to anger and alienate enough people for one article.  Are those torches and pitchforks I see out in the street in front of my house?

Bob Bandy

Reprinted with only my closing comment. 

I received this via email with a request to share it.

With an apology to Aesop

Once upon a time there was a pleasant meadow in a lovely valley.

A colony of ants came to the meadow and saw that the land was good and with work would provide for a lovely place to live for them and their children.

They worked hard and put away food for the winter and cared for the land.

From a neighboring valley a tribe of locusts came to the land of the ants and decided to stay because the meadow was so pleasant and fertile.

The ants welcomed them in as neighbors and soon they all decided that they should form a government and each ant and locust would get an equal vote in the affairs of the meadow.

Some of the  locusts came to the ants and said they were poor and in need.  Being of kind heart the ants voted to share the fruits of their hard work with the locusts.

Being locusts, they did what locusts are prone to do, that is create lots of little locusts and sit in their burrows eating the food produced by the ants and watching their flat screen televisions paid for by the ants.

In time they discovered, as the little locusts grew up to vote, that they now outnumbered the ants and could vote themselves more and more of what the ants were working so hard to produce.

More and more locusts had baby locusts and invited their relatives and kin in from neighboring meadows.

One by one the ants figured out that they were doing all the work and the locusts were doing all the eating and loafing and watching television.

The ants decided that they did not want to continue to provide for an ever increasing number of locusts who did little to provide for themselves.

The ants packed up and left the now ravaged meadow and moved away to another meadow in another valley.

Winter came to the meadow of the abandoned locusts.  The locusts starved and froze because there was no longer any ants to provide for them what they refused to provide for themselves.

And the shadow of darkness fell over the formerly  pleasant meadow in the formerly lovely valley.

End of story.  If you are an ant you know the moral of the story.  If you are a locust you don’t care if there is a moral; you just want to know where the ants went.

Bob Bandy

Have not posted anything in a while.  Written a number of drafts but not been happy with the content or tone.  Following what is happening in national and world events has gotten me into something of a “funk”.

I have always thought of myself as a positive kind of person.  Tried to see humor, or at least irony,  in most of the foibles of mankind.

But, I can’t see anything cute or funny in what is happening to the country I was born in and loved all my life.  This is not a Democrat or Republican thing.  A pox on both their houses.  They both “brung us here where we is now”. 

From my view there are two catastrophic problems facing the United States and everything else is the fruit of these two things.

One: You can’t have true civilization without civility and we are loosing our ability to be civil with one another.  We are dividing into warring camps with irreconcilable differences.  Not everything can be compromised.

Two: The discipline of simple mathematics.  No matter what title or letters you put before or after you name, you cannot get 20 pounds of potatoes from a 10 pound sack and that is what we are trying to do.  The universe does not care what your political affiliation is or if you don’t like the laws of mathematics.  Ultimately, math is like gravity and spending money you don’t have is like trying to fly without wings.  Deficit spending can only go so high before it all comes tumbling down.

If you are an individual, a corporation, or even a city and you spend “what you don’t got” you can file Bankruptcy.  In the case of a corporation, Bankruptcy leaves the stockholders holding an empty bag and in the case of city (or state) the taxpayers are the recipients of said empty sack.   If you are a nation you cannot declare Bankruptcy.  Nations can do what we can’t do;  print money.   They start printing more and more paper money and the result is inflation or hyper-inflation.  Inflation is always harmful or catastrophic to those on fixed or limited income (like the elderly) and can make a lifetime of savings do a vanishing act.  As an example, gasoline that used to be $1.50 a gallon becomes $3 or $5 or $10 a gallon.  Math is not evil it is just relentless.

History is littered with the carcasses of nations that did not practice the fiscal discipline required by the laws of mathematics.  The news tells us that our nation is approaching a fiscal “cliff”.

I have reached that point where I recognize that, as a people, we lack the discipline to avoid what is going to happen very soon if we do not make some very difficult and painful changes.  I am not alone in this observation.

Is it already to late?  Is the sky falling?

Bob Bandy

I remember in the movie “The Godfather” when the son Michael killed the “bad” cop and the opposition mobster, how the male members of the Godfathers organization “went to the mattresses”.  Lying low and staying out of sight of their enemies.

I believe that if things continue on their present course in this country with business stifling regulations, high taxes and an all powerful and oppressive government we may see the “producers” in this country simply get fed up and go to the economic mattresses.

Large numbers of former taxpayers may just decide to adjust their lives in such a way as to remain below confiscatory tax thresholds and live simpler lives with lower  economic resources.

I remember a happy young father who worked for me once.  He had a large family and a stay at home wife.  I once asked him how they “made it”?  He told me that they did just fine.  Had an older but serviceable car,  a modest residence and that they lived their lives with a basic but wholesome diet using discounted and coupon items as much as possible.  They rarely bought new consumer items.  They felt no need to impress anyone.  Whenever possible they shopped at thrift stores, yard sales and the like.  When they did shop for “new” items they generally only purchased items at discounted or “sale” prices.   Not a lifestyle for everyone but they were happy, had lots of time for each other, content with their lives and had no debts.  They also paid very little in the way of taxes.  Were they “poor”?  You decide.  It seems to me that they had figured out a way to “Stop Pulling The Wagon” to a large degree.

What would happen if large numbers of  hard working, tax paying members of our citizenry were to adopt similar lifestyles?

Bob Bandy