Bailouts...or Bust?

President Obama has spent more money in his first 500 days in office than any other human being has spent in the history of money. The sums are not only staggering, they are staggering squared.

Some say he had no choice—the economy was crashing down around us. He had to bail out the banks, and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the car companies and AIG…and, oh yeah, how about the 26 billion dollar bill he signed just the other day to bail out state governments that couldn't manage their budgets?

No bailout is good—they reek of rewards for bad business practices. Nonetheless, some of them must be a necessary evil, I suppose. The problem comes with a full embrace of the concept, as though what is wrong is also fair.

If there must be a bailout, to make it palatable, it should be accompanied by an excruciating pain for everyone, so that no one—not the government, not the recipient, not the average ”Joe”—can think of another bailout without experiencing severe bouts of vomiting and diarrhea.

The problem with Obama’s bailouts is that they are painless; they offer no balance—no austerity on the other hand, no sacrifice. We are simply spending money, which sounds too much like fun.

What eats at Americans most about these bailouts is that they are not earned. That goes against our grain. Our work ethic may be dulled, but we still hold by this creed: Anybody can spend a buck. The real man is the one who earns it.

Pics from Woodland Park Day

In Honor of Woodland Park

On Saturday, August 7, 2010 Woodland Park, MI was designated an historical marker in the state of Michigan. In honor of his home town Larry wrote a song entitled, "Marching As One, Woodland Park." Congratulations to Woodland Park and all those who made her their home!

The old bowed tree in front of The Breeze

Where we tested our leap and our mettle

Sitting the tracks with the sun at our backs

Remembering the days, how they settled

Bid whist games when the rains came

The runs too muddy for sledding

Long, country days, we had it our way

And knew just where we were heading...

Marching as one
Woodland Park
Through a land called "Home"
Woodland Park
Through the woods of our birth
That sweet patch of Earth
Where we grew straight and strong

Singing our song
About the woods we would roam
Whether dusty dirt roads
Or blackberry lodes
It's where we belonged
Marching as one
Marching as one
Marching as one...

The back roads know of the heartaches

And promises written in the sand

They know of secrets that only time will tell

Of enchanted nights hand in hand

We praise above for these woods we love

Its moonlit nights on the beach

For the flowers that bloom in its April room

And memories that make us complete...

Marching as one
Woodland Park
Through a land called "Home"
Woodland Park
Through the woods of our birth
That sweet patch of Earth
Where we grew straight and strong

Singing our song
About the woods we would roam
Whether dusty dirt roads
Or blackberry lodes
It's where we belonged

Coming on strong
Thinking 'bout those we've known
All the people who've stayed
Or just came and played
They made this a home

Oh, the people we've known
How their spirits have flown
Come on back inside
This door's open wide
It's always your home

Marching as one
Through a land called "Home"
Through the good and the bad
The sound and the mad
What a place to belong

Marching as one
Through a land called "Home"
Through the good and the bad
The sound and the mad
What a place to belong..

Twitter This

With all of the e-mails and facebook, the i-phones, i-pads, and i-pods, you would think we would have grown closer to one another. But we haven’t; we are further apart.

This great technology boom has been a bust in real terms. We are no better at running our businesses, at trading our goods, nor at employing our people.

We put fancy computers into our schools, but our children are no smarter. They learn how to “Search” and “Insert,” but they don’t learn how to read and write. They can twitter, but they can’t spell. We will spend $500 for a computer for each student when all they really need is a book, pencil, and a piece of paper…oh and some discipline. They need to learn how to sit still and listen.

Most of all, these technological wonders have not strengthened our relationship with the people who matter most in our lives. Moreover, I offer that we have weakened our relationships—undermined the very soul of all relationships: trust.

Instead of having faith in our last conversation before our children go off to school and our spouses go off to work, we seek the continuous assurance that text messages provide. We are more dependant than ever, and less free.

If I were in the world, I would ban all visitors from bringing cell phones into my home. If you came with one, you would have to check it at the door, or leave. As you leave, I would suggest that you would go home and turn the cell phone off. Then listen to the most unique and beautiful sound of all—the sound of your family.

Oil Upon the Waters

We call ourselves “a nation of laws.” But our laws are weak and subject to the whims of those who wield power.

There is another set of laws, however—the laws of physics. They rule the very universe. They are the same laws from which we find that “oil and water do not mix.” Still, we pour oil upon the waters.

The Gulf region is blessed with sprawling beaches, scenic vistas, and abundant fisheries. It also has oil beneath its great waters. In fact, oil revenue accounts for well over a third of Louisiana’s economy. Tourism and fishing fairly round out the rest. Interestingly, fishing and tourism easily go hand-in-hand. Oil, on its best day, is incompatible with both. On its worst day, as we plainly see, it is a death sentence to the other two. Still, the Gulf coast people want that oil. Tell them oil is incompatible with fine beaches and abundant fisheries, and you breach one of their favorite laws—the one that says they can have their cake and eat it, too.

There are no innocents in this Gulf debacle, (except for the fishies.) We all have a part in this nightmare—Dems, Republicans, oil companies and us plain old everyday greedy Americans. Oil is big money. That’s how we like our money…big. When President Obama tried to levy a moratorium on off-shore drilling, the Gulf coast people screamed. They want their oil.

These people have played a willing game of Russian roulette. Now that the chamber has discharged, they look about as though they had no idea it was loaded. They had gone to the casino with the rent money, and lost. Now they want their money back. And they will get it.

Today it is fashionable to pity the people of the Gulf. Obama convinced BP to set aside $20 billion escrow account for them. Larry king held a telethon—raised $1.8 million for those “harmed by the spill.” How nice. People getting paid for the ocean they despoiled.

This $20 billion escrow account is obscene—a grab bag, the likes of which this world has never witnessed. As this piece goes to print, lawyers across America are filing into “How-to” seminars, and coming out touting their abilities to not only get at that money, but to follow up the “big-grab” with lawsuits if they don’t “grab” enough.

There is one group, “Hands Across The Sands”—people from all 50 states and 35 nations in hand-holding solidarity—hoping to stave off any further off shore drilling. Against the immense weight o greed in this country, they just as soon hope to hold back the tides.

A snapshot of what they are up against will crystallize in the moment the victim petitioners light into that $20 billion pot of gold. It will be a feeding frenzy. There will be blood.

Meanwhile, the oil continues to pour into the Gulf waters. On the 60^th day of the oil onslaught, the Louisiana legislature called for a day of prayer—one that will end the gusher and save their precious shores. (Now they think of their shores.)

Interestingly, they pray to God to stop the oil when conceivably it is the same God who all along had protected their shores from that same oil—burying it as he had millions of years ago beneath a mile of ocean and two miles of bedrock. It was the people of the Gulf who cheered on BP, spurred as they were by vision of plum jobs, big-spending oil workers, and lucrative contracts. They willed BP to be relentless, and so BP was, until it had punched a hole three miles down and struck black gold. Now they want God to re-seal the seabed.

Sorry, folks, it just ain’t that easy, now that you have a tiger by the tail.

The Naked Prey

In the 60’s movie, “The Naked Prey” - set in colonial Africa - a Brit on safari shoots at something big swimming in the river. When asked what it was, he replies, “ I don’t know. But whatever it was it’s dead now.

Today, America conducts a drone war in the tribal areas of Pakistan. These unmanned drones target people from high up in the sky and obliterate them with precision-guided missiles.

A month ago, the Obama administration announced that it had killed M. Mehsud, a top Taliban commander, in another such strike in the tribal areas. Followed the self-congratulatory pats on the back.

Now it turns out that Mehsud is not dead after all. Seems he was spotted the other day, alive and well, in those same tribal region .

So, who did we kill in that drone strike? Apparently, we do not know. All we know for certain is that whoever it was, he’s dead now.

Time to Condemn Slavery, And Those Who Loved It

“No people have ever fought so valiantly for so wrong a cause.” --Ulysses S. Grant, upon accepting Lee’s surrender at Appomattox

Virginia’s governor, Bob McDonald, has declared April, “Confederate Appreciation Month.” Though he failed to mention slavery in his initial declaration, he hopes to honor those who died to defend it. Among Americans, there was a scant outcry.

America has always tried to look away whenever the south acted out. We continue that practice today, as though we pity them still, and wish to leave them dignity where there is none.

Slavery was a cancer. The confederacy’s very reason for being was to insure that cancer survived, and spread. All other efforts to make more of the Confederacy—to separate it from its purpose—are blatant attempts at deception, and exercises in denial. Whenever we seek to placate the South by catering to its precious Confederacy, we keep the cancer alive.

Now is the time for a resolution declaring the enslavement of African-Americans a Crime Against Humanity. Such a resolution is completely overdue.

Time to revive the spirit of the 60’s—not just the 1960’s, when African-Americans rose up to realize their finest hour—but even the 1860’s, when Abraham Lincoln threw down the gauntlet—issued the Emancipation Proclamation—and drove this nation to make a hard right turn.

Time to end all pretenses that the ante bellum South was anything more than a renegade province that waged a 200-year reign of terror against a defenseless and innocent people.

Time to admit that the confederacy was nothing more than a last ditch attempt to save slavery—to defend to the death the most vile system devised by man.

Time to condemn slavery once and for all, and to condemn those who loved it.

Just as Lincoln’s Proclamation ended all Southern hopes of England, or any other foreign power siding with the South, so a “Crimes” resolution will end all future attempts to glorify that which is officially an abomination.

Today, we can end all doubt as to where we, as a united nation, stand. No senator or representative will do it for us. If they would, then they would have done it 150 years ago, or some other time between then and now. Most have neither the will to brave those political winds, nor the vision to see what is an absolute and just imperative if this nation is to move forward as one.

You join me in offering this transformative resolution to the American People. Let Congress join us. We can do it. It is time.

The system of slavery inflicted upon the African-American people, primarily practiced in the southern states of America during the 18^th and 19^th centuries, shall henceforth and forever be declared a Crime Against Humanity.

All parties in support of said system, e.g., the Confederacy, et al, shall be deemed complicit in these crimes and unworthy of any and all further recognition except that recognition be wholly within the confines of its association with slavery, and the object of this resolution.

Signatories to this Resolution include:

Larry R. Carter, et al