Random Saturday Musings

From George Will, "Liberals are deeply disappointed with the public, which fails to fathom the excellence of their agenda." Will nails it, to cite a sports phrase! Liberals are what Thomas Sowell calls, "the anointed," although "the self-anointed" is more accurate, I think. They are smarter than we are; they know what's best for us better than we do. Now, I have no doubt the conservatives might think the same things, that they are smarter, etc. But, they are not the ones trying to ram through all this deleterious legislation right now.

Consider, the federal deficit/debt. If government spending goes up the $1.2 trillion dollars as projected, that is about $150,000 for every man, woman, child in this country! Instead of the gov't spending all of this, most as we know is wasted, how about giving us each $150K and let us spend it? Imagine the jobs we, not Congress, could create by going on a spending spree of those proportions! I point to students, who are rarely confronted with negatives views of FDR and the New Deal, that the tax rates during the Depression were about 23% for those making $2000 and 94% for those making $200,000 and above. Let's see, the lower income gets to take home $1540 (I used my calculator!) and the upper income takes home $12,000. Wait a minute... You mean one guy makes 100 times what the other guy does, but gets to spend only about 7.5 times more? You are catching on students.... Then, I ask, let's suppose we tax the upper brackets at only (I do say it facetiously) 50%, so the upper income actually brings home $100,000. What do you think he's going to do with that extra $88K the government hasn't taken? The cogs begin to turn, as I continue to ask--and who's going to make all those extra things that $88K per person is going to buy? Hmm....

Speaking of FDR, let's toss in LBJ and make it complete. Are we ever going to get out of this atmosphere of dependence on the gov't started and furthered by these two, among others? I was struck this week, twice in two different classes, by two students questions. Is this when (the Depression) people started expecting government handouts? (OK, that wasn't exactly how the questions were worded, but was certainly the gist of them.) Need we wonder?

Chas Krauthammer had an interesting piece this week. He asked us to reflect on the costs of progress. For instance, we have drugs that are dangerous for a small percentage, a very small percentage, of people, but they are very helpful for overwhelmingly larger percentages. Yet, the outcry to ban these drugs is deafening. Vioxx, which was found to increase the risk of heart attacks and strokes a "whopping" 0.75% to 1.5% among users, was taken off the market. But how many people who were no longer able to treat their debilitating arthritis, among other things, were now denied the chance to do so? The risk was theirs, yet the choice was taken from their hands by the do-gooders who forced the ban. They were now faced with crippled lives. Should we bring up the 55 mph speed limit and the number of lives that saved versus the 70 mph limit? That reminds me of the folks who decry the "GREED" of Wall Street, of the big oil companies, of the banks, etc., yet find nothing wrong with giving their favorite college football teams' coaches millions of dollars, with funding stadiums to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars, of pay Major League players tens of millions of dollars a year, etc. Has anyone come close to calculating the numbers of Third World lives lost or the suffering and misery of those who didn't die because of the ban on DDT several decades ago? Who said a little knowledge is a dangerous thing?

I was pouring (or is it poring???) through a magazine for librarians (or is it media specialists???) the other day. I was checking the reviews of books, videos, DVD, etc. Has anyone ever been critical of a biog of Pres Obama or his wife or a history of Am Indians, etc.?

Funny, our basketball team was lambasted today. If I didn't know better, I'd think we hadn't just had 7 weeks of games and practices. It was that bad, if not worse. I did have to laugh, though, when one parent came to me at halftime of one of the games and complained that one kid on the opposing team "wasn't guarding his man." The kid "was double teaming, just running all over the court stealing the ball." Well, yep, he was, but.... Didn't this parent notice our kids, including his, dribbling with heads down, losing the ball to players they didn't see because their head were down? Didn't he notice the rotten passes to the other team (I facetiously told our players during a time out that we were wearing white jerseys, not red) because their heads were down and they couldn't see who they were passing to? Didn't he notice the missed shots, when we were able to take them or the lack of trying for rebounds (jump? grab and hold the ball? You mean you might have to jump and then grab and hold the ball to get a rebound?)? Ah, the pleasures of myopia.

Can't wait for tomorrow AM's NY Times Crossword (about the only thing still worthwhile in that paper, but the NY Times doesn't see that yet) and the coupons. (I saved over $60 this week, out of $90-some.)

Out to have a ham sandwich on oat bread with honey mustard....