Pet Peeves Answered

Good friend of mine - good person - sent this email to me this morning. My response follows her email.

Morning. I have another project. Pet peeve. I would love to ask all the candidate, though I am sure a straight answer is like hens teeth, this question. Since there are still people from Katrina displaced and in those trailers (which I think have caused health problems) then why are we spending millions/billions in the space program. Its like a mother buying Jimmy Choo shoes and not having enough to feed her kids.

So with that sort of thing in mind. I ride to many barns in Maryland. I became curious about how much was spent on flowers on the highway. I mean its lovely but it just seems sort of frivolous when people are still hurting. So I decided to see how much , as a state , we spend. ($150,000) I don’t know if I should email the rest of the states or use that as an average. But couldn't this money be donated for one year for that purpose so actual people can bloom.

My Response

Well, if the ($150,000) would actually get to the people to help I might agree with you, however by the time the government got through with it maybe 10 cents out of the dollar might make it somewhere useful. I also bet that there are/would be private organizations willing to donate the resources to plant the flowers. However there are so many government regulations that they probably couldn't afford the liability insurance - let alone the flowers.

And sorry, but don't get me started on Katrina. Being a resident of a state that handles hurricane preparedness and the aftermath well what happened in Louisiana irritates the hell out of me. Everyone saw the 1000+ school buses sitting in the flooded lot. When the question was raised about why they were not used to evacuate people - Ray "Chocolate City" Nagin said, "We couldn't find anyone to drive them." yeah right. If a 15 year old boy could commandeer a bus, pick up people along the streets in New Orleans and get three fourths of the way to Houston before he was stopped then they damn sure could have found people who would have been more than willing to drive those buses. A few days before the hurricane hit - when it was pretty obvious the storm was going to hit New Orleans - the President asked the Governor of Louisiana to let the Louisiana National Guard be federalized so they would be under the direction of the federal government and she refused. Had that happened I guarantee you there would have been national guard people to drive the buses. So I put 98% of the human devastation caused during the storm directly on the shoulders of the Louisiana and New Orleans governments. That being said I lay a majority of the foolishness that happened in the weeks, months, and years following at the feet of the feds. Instead of thinking the darn things out and getting the people what they needed they Knee-jerked in response to the publicity and started handing out $2,000.00 cash cards - a lot of which got spent in strip clubs and on $600.00 designer purses, etc.

Again - so many government regulations and bureaucracies so big that one hand doesn't know what the other is doing just means waste and very little accomplished. And, again, there are probably many private concerns that could do better but too many government regulations.

As far as the space program goes, sorry, but I am for it. Actually their real dollars (when adjusted for inflation and in relation to other government programs) have shrunk. Still over the life of NASA the science in many fields (medicine, computer technology, etc.) have migrated into the private sector and returned more than the dollars invested. So I have no problem with it whatsoever. As far as your analogy goes about the mother buying the shoes and not having enough to feed her kids - I feel this way. There are always going to be people in this country who -either by birth or because of disease or accident - are incapable of taking care of themselves. I think it is our moral responsibility to take care of those people and we could do it well and very easily if it weren't for the fact that too many politicians are in the business of paying people for their own bad behavior/decisions - just to buy votes.


Well - I'm climbing down off my soapbox - for now.

Later,,

Dane

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Brave, brave Stephen King - NOT

I guess Noel Sheppard published a piece on his blog talking about how Stephen King said that if you can read you can walk into a job, but if you can't then you are stuck with the military and going to Iraq. So I had to go to King's site (http://www.stephenking.com/) and Sheppard's (http://newsbusters.org/blog/26) to see what was going on. King posted a message on his site under news (which is the first thing that pops up - just scroll down) and the idiot is trying to defend what he said by stating that he lives in a National Guard town and that he supports the troops but he doesn't support an educational system that gives students only one option - "canon fodder". So basically he was saying he supports the troops while calling them dummies at the same time. I wonder if he sent his kids to private school and I wonder how many millions he has donated to schools? If he is so concerned with the educational system why doesn't he take a few of his spare millions and set up a scholarship fund for underprivileged kids to go to private schools? No he is too egalitarian for that. Heaven forbid he should do anything himself. No, no, no, it must be done through the public schools so the rest of us can continue to pour money down the drain we call the Public Education System. But if it has to be the public system he could donate a few mil to the NEA for them to use to increase the quality of education (hey let's just limit it to Maine - his home state) and see what difference it makes.

Or let him go to the bad side of Anytown, USA, walk up to some drug dealer there who really can't read, and say, "Hey I'm a famous author and I'm here to tell you if you don't learn to read you won't be able to get a job other than as canon fodder. First of all they would probably climb out of their Escalade, flash a roll of a few thousand, then pop a cap in his ass faster than an Iraqi Sadir City militiaman. The last thing he would hear before the second shot is, "Hey man that's what you get for dissing me. I don't be no canon fodder. Just ask any of my baby mommas."

Anyway, after providing a link to Noel Sheppard's blog site and telling them to send Noel and e-mail stating "I agree with Stephen so shut up." He did the brave thing and shut down posting on his own site. But hey, give him credit for staying true to the liberal elitist attitude of "I can say anything I want and do anything I want but I don't have to live with the consequences.

What a Bozo.

Funny thing I have enjoyed most of Stephen King's books though over the last few years he has published a couple of terrible ones that seem to have no point and little plot. However if I am going to read anything in that genre anymore I will read Dean Koontz. He actually, in his books of the last few years, has made some comments in the context of the stories about how this country is going to hell in a hand basket - due mostly to government interference, the failing educational system, and the breakdown of the family. And he extols personal responsibility.

I may read a King book or two in the future but I will never buy one again. I'll wait to buy it at the Salvation Army or borrow it from the Library. Not one more dime for King out of my pocket.


It's pretty obvious to me that my worst nightmare isn't something that came out of Stephen King's imagination. Instead it is Stephen King and like minded arrogant liberals.