RANDOM THOUGHTS ON A LOT OF THINGS

I watched the Vice Presidential debate. I didn’t think there was much about the attack on our embassy that was funny. It would appear that Biden thought it was. For Obama to deny that the attack was terrorism was a calculated political move which somewhat explains his actions, but to deny the embassy additional security when asked, was accessory to murder. Whether that refusal for security came from the State Dept. or the White House, the guilty party or parties should be terminated and possibly prosecuted. There is no excuse for this dereliction, period.

Social Security is going to increase benefits by 1.7% for 2013. Just based on the price of gasoline alone between today and this time last year, your entire increase will be eaten up by gasoline costs. This does not even consider food prices, Medicare, medical costs, or any other goods and services we need. I wonder how they figure their cost of living inflation.

This morning’s polls have Romney ahead by seven points. To me that is not nearly as newsworthy as the fact that there are still some “undecided” voters. What world have they been living in? Another question is how could any thinking person,  knowing the record of the Obama Administration, still consider voting for four more years of the same. It blows my mind.

The “alleged” murderer, Major Nidal Hasan, who is charged with assassinating all those people at Ft. Hood, Texas, still hasn’t gone to trial. He wants to keep his beard because he says it is his religious right. He has been in the military for years and he knows he cannot have a beard. Nothing has changed. Today I learned that he has been ordered to shave or he will be forcibly shaved. Why has this taken so long? He should have long since been given his seventy-two virgins and fed to the hogs. I personally do not want to ever see his ugly face again. By the way, his lawyers have said they intend to appeal the shaving ruling. Who is paying for these lawyers and how much do you suppose they are charging for their services?

Speaking of presidential debates, Al Gore opined that Obama did poorly in the first debate because of the altitude. Does that mean that Obama can only be presidential at sea level? If you, like me, ever doubted Gore’s intelligence, that statement should clear that up.

Romney is being severely criticized because his tax rate is only 15% and that is lower than people who earn $50,000 a year as plumbers. Phony-baloney nonsense. Everybody in this country has exactly the same tax rates. Invested money that earns interest or gains is taxed at 15% for every person in the country and earned salary is taxed as income where the maximum rate is 35% for every person in this country. Every person in the country has the same opportunity to take exemptions when they are allowed and they are the same for everybody. Remember this, the money that a person has invested which is taxed at 15% has already been taxed as income prior to the investment. The fact that Romney made twenty million dollars last year is his good fortune, not your bad fortune.

I wonder how much car insurance would cost if insurance companies didn’t spend so much on commercials. It seems they dominate the TV screen. Speaking of TV commercials, why do prescription drug manufacturers advertise a product that one cannot even buy without a doctor’s order? Strange.

How is it possible that “American Idol” is still on television? And all the dancing shows. And who cares what Kim Kardashian thinks about anything?

Joe Soucheray, on his radio show “Garage Logic” from St. Paul, MN, says “Sometimes I just don’t think I was made for these times.” I so often feel the same way.

Ron Scarbro October 24, 2012

THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM

I have never owned a slave. I do not personally know anyone who has ever owned a slave. My history books tell me James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington owned slaves, but I have never owned a slave. I have had black employees and black supervisors, but I have never had a slave of any color or nationality. In fact, had I lived during the slave period in this country, it is far more likely that I would have been a slave than I would have owned one. The reason I am pointing this out is that I feel zero guilt about slavery. I wasn’t there, period.

Because I have no guilt, I do not owe any special considerations, reparations, or, in fact, anything to black people or any other group who feels the need to have special privilege or identity. All legal citizens living in this country have the same opportunity to succeed and to fail. To those among you who would say, but Ron, you have never had to travel through life as a black man. That’s true but, let me tell you of an experience I had with a friend who happened to be black. He was an accomplished sales manager who made a very good living. I asked him if he, with his very important position in life, ever found racial discrimination directed at him. His answer was perfect. He said he found discrimination everywhere he looked for it. That pretty much says it all.

The reason for this essay is that the other day I was in a large store here in the south. The store was the one which was owned by a fellow named Sam from Benton, Arkansas. You know the one. Anyway, in the store was a multitude of black women shopping, many together. Most had several young children running around them. Virtually all of them had a cell phone connected to their ear. In their carts was junk food from soda pop to sugary cereals. So far none of this was my business, right? At the checkout stand, virtually all of them paid for their groceries with the famous EBT card (food stamps). That is when it became all of our business.

This occurred in the middle of the day during a normal work week, so it is easy to assume none of them were employed. Most were stylishly dressed. I didn’t see what sort of car they got into.

What I just described is no mystery to anyone. It happens everywhere, not just here in the south. We have a class of people who are living off the system, period. I would bet you that none of these young women had a husband and most probably don’t even know who the father of their children is. The practice of pumping out babies has become their career. Sadly many of these babies will grow up to be the next generation of criminals and welfare mothers.

The media never talks about this. This has become “The Elephant in the Room.” My question is does the media not know about this problem, or do they know and not think of it as a problem? Is their guilt about perceived past injustices so great that they ignore this serious problem?

One thing is crystal clear, you are paying for these excesses. You are financing these generations of dependents on the system. You are funding the next generation of thugs and criminals growing up in our inner cities. Another thing is also clear. It is not going to change until you see it as a problem and demand it come to an end.

Nobody seems to want to publicly speak about this. They seem to want to ignore it. I say that unless and until the black community chooses to deal with this and change it, their lot in life in this great country will continue to decline. How sad.

Ron Scarbro October 17, 2012

TWO NATIONS

I have become increasingly concerned that America is developing into two separate nations. For many years we have had basically a two party system but we have been able to compromise and get along. That no longer seems to be the case. We now have nearly half of our population dependent on government for some sort of financial assistance through food stamps, unemployment benefits, or untold other exotic forms of government assistance. Of course the other half of our population is being taxed in order to pay for these benefits. The dependent class is growing while the working and contributing class is dwindling. A simple question is what will happen when the dependent class outnumbers the contributing class? What happens when there are more takers than there are payers?

I read recently that France has decided to set their income tax rate for millionaires at 75%. Sounds good until you look into the details. The first thing that is going to happen is that millionaires are either going to hide their assets or they are going to take them and themselves to another country. This isn’t brain surgery you know. Most millionaires aren’t millionaires because they are stupid. In addition, most millionaires don’t have huge incomes to tax. Most have their money invested and therefore protected from income taxes. The same is true for this country. We haven’t raised our income tax to 75% yet but any effort by the government to unfairly burden the wealthy with excessive taxes will be met with frustration at accomplishing the task. As I have said previously, any unenforceable law or tax is just a silly exercise. If those who are targeted by those laws refuse to participate, the law goes nowhere.

The two nations I referred to earlier are the takers and the contributors. Let’s face it. If the contributors stop contributing, the money train ends. You know who makes up the contributor class. It is of course the business owners and the well to do among us. It is the people who get out of bed every morning and go to work. It is the entrepreneurs who have ideas and put them into effect by their actions. It is the investors who buy stock in companies making capital available to these businesses. It is the farmer who plows his fields and raises his livestock. It is not, nor has it ever been, the welfare recipients or the moocher class among us. It is not the college girl who expects working people to pay for her birth control pills. It is not the people who refuse to go to work but prefer to drain their benefits. It is not the illegal aliens among us who extract their livelihood from the good intentions of the working class. In other words, there is no such thing as a bottom up economy, period. These are the dependent nation.

There is surely an answer if it isn’t already too late. First, the wrong people are in charge. We need to get rid of them and put people in office who understand how our economic system works. We need to show appreciation for the accomplishers and shame for the idlers among us. How is there honor for a young girl to pump out babies for the financial benefits she accrues? How is there no shame for the men who father these babies and then refuse to participate in their financial welfare? Where is the honor in living off the system?

Going forward there are only two real possibilities. Either we change out our elected “leaders” and put real accomplished people in office thereby getting our economy back on track, or we ride our gravy train over the cliff. It is clear there is no other answer. I know which nation I would prefer to live in, do you?

Ron Scarbro October 10, 2012

HOW HAVE I SURVIVED?

I was born and raised in East Tennessee. I wouldn’t exactly say we were hillbillies, but we were certainly country folks. To give you some examples of what I mean, indoor plumbing was not a part of my early life. We had an outhouse. I can remember when the ice man brought ice for our “icebox.” We didn’t have a refrigerator. To us, running water meant you had to run and get it. As children I remember baths being in a washtub on the living room floor and my two brothers and I shared the same bathwater because the water had to be heated on the wood burning stove. We necessarily only got maybe one bath a week. But we survived.

Virtually every building, churches, schools, and our own houses, regularly used copious amounts of a miraculous fireproof product known as asbestos. It was used for insulation as well as outdoor siding. No one knew or suspected it was a problem, but we still survived.

I remember in school we played with mercury. It was fun. We would pour it out into our hands and roll it around and pass it among our friends. It was a scientific experiment. We all managed to survive.

All our buildings as well as our own houses were painted with lead based enamel paint. When it was time to re-paint, we scraped the old off and painted with new lead based enamel paint. We didn’t wear masks. How is it possible that I still survived?

I had my own gun by the time I was twelve years old. We all went hunting on a regular basis. We took our guns to school and kept them in our lockers. Nobody ever shot anybody. We saved our ammunition for rabbits and squirrels. Oh, and by the way, all we used was lead based ammunition. We often would eat our game and pick out the lead buckshot at the table. Of course everything was fried in pig fat and often served with gravy. When we were out hunting, we drank water from the creeks and springs which were readily available to us. We played with firecrackers, the real ones. Aren’t those things supposed to be dangerous? Our cars didn’t have seat belts or airbags. And yet we survived.

So what is the point of all this?  I was recently listening to some folks from the food police as well as the CDC, the Centers for Disease Control. According to them there is no way anyone could survive any one of the incidents I reported earlier let alone all of them. But we did. Oh and by the way, most of my relatives from earlier generations lived well into their 90s and beyond. All lived under the same conditions I described earlier. They apparently didn’t get the memo that you cannot survive the way we lived.

Here’s a question. Were the earlier generations, including my own, stronger than today’s people? When we used unpasteurized dairy products without ill effect, were we just lucky? When we butchered our own livestock without benefit of Federal inspection and managed to survive, were we just fortunate?  

Don’t get me wrong. I am very grateful for modern medicine. I am pleased with what we have learned in the past few years. I know our lives have been made better by new discoveries, but I seriously doubt that the situation of my early life was nearly as bad as today’s food and medicine police would have you believe. We lived uncomplicated lives. My mother saved mayonnaise jars for canning vegetables. She didn’t know you were not supposed to do that.

Today I believe people are stressed more by the fear of food and their environment  and that fear is far more harmful to them than either their food or the environment. Relax. Eat a hot fudge sundae. Have some gravy and biscuits. Life is a terminal condition. Enjoy it. You only pass this way once.

Ron Scarbro  October 3, 2012