RANT: “The homeless”

Saturday, February 4, 2006

Could it be possible but by the government assuming the role of “charity” that they have created a problem?

First, government has increased its size at the expense of individual charity, the family, the Churches, the fraternal organizations, and a civil society in general. Letting government grow is bad. Putting the “post office” in charge of helping human being with serious needs and problems is absurd.

Second, the Acton Institute hosts a page on “effective compassion” http://www.acton.org/publicat/books/transformwelfare/olasky.html “Effective Compassion: Seven Principles from a Century Ago” by Marvin Olasky where he convinced me that this type of government program is a disaster.

Third, the government takes by force of arms my taxes for all sorts of drivel. If that wasn’t wrong enough, in and of itself, it deprives me of the funds that I could use to fund what I judge to be effective compassion for the less fortunate. For more than a decade, I have made modest monthly contributions to HomeFrontNJ http://www.homefrontnj.org/ because I know the lady who runs it. This is one woman who is “thriftier” with a buck than Frau Reinke considering my annual technology budget. I know how she litterally battles the Trenton social establishment to free these poor souls. So if my taxes went down 10% then I could and probably would contribute more. My taxes keep going up!

AND, it displaces the organizations who could be helping. By making government bigger, it forces the Churches to the sidelines. It absorbs the money in tazes that people would have contributed to churches. It’s a viscious cycle. Remember that dollars into washington, trenton, newbrunswick, or southbrunswick seats of government come out the other side as pennies worth of “services”! My particular favorite is when we pay taxes to washington, washington gives grants to trenton, trenton gives grants to newbrunswick, newbrunswick gives grants to southbrunswick, and southbrunswick repaves my street! I’d have been better off burning my money in a bonfire on the lawn!

Now you knwo why I procrastinate. It deprives the tax collector or more to steal!

 

 

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Overcoming procrastination

Saturday, February 4, 2006

I know people who know me wouldn’t beleive it but I am a procrastinator at heart. I would rather waste away my time on this earth with mindless quadrant four activites than lift my heavy load. So, to attempt to overcome this character flaw, I’ll waste my time logging what I do. At least this time-wasting activity might inspire others to get a life. Or if they have one to get abck to it. Why are you reading my whining unless you have to.

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Medical Insurance stinks

Thursday, February 2, 2006

Who decided what your primary carrier is?

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Gary North writes a history of the sixties

Thursday, February 2, 2006

http://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north432.html

Dear Professor North,

I hope when I have matured like you, I can codify “wisdom” for others to use.

Born in 47, I grew up too late for the “free love” but not too late for the effects of Vietnam Republic Of. As a young republican, on my way to being a Libertarian, I think you may want to somehow capture the real impact of Vietnam on me and my peers. I think that it fundamentally altered the USA probably as much as the American Revolution, the Civil War, the Great Depression, and WW2. I’m not a philosopher, educator, or a historian. I’m an “injineer”. http://public.2idi.com/=reinkefj I basically earn my daily bread by fixing things. Information Technology and Business Processes. But, fixing things never the less.

So I may not be qualified to opine on this fracture in the late 60’s being the watershed event to “bend” the flow of the American history. But I feel, I sense, that this single thing did more to “break the spirit” of my generation than anything else. From that “breaking” several bad things followed.

Let me cite some evidence from my personal life. I was deferred while I was in College from 64-69. I was a five year engineer – the draft had some effect on keeping me diligently in school – as well as interested in that fifth year to add some credentials. My peers who failed at school were immediately drafted and gone. Several absconded to Canada and the underground. That was traumatic. We lost some of the best and brightest to the Army and the underground. Had we been at peace, there is no doubt in my mind that they would have been productive members of society, contributing, with families, and adding to the synergy. I know that some of them who went underground died in the Drug Culture. I know that all of us were scared for life by the experience. After graduation, I was drafted. Recruiters screwed everyone so why should I be different. My first lesson in government lies. While I didn’t go to Vietnam, I was taken out of AT&T where I missed FOUR YEARS of opportunities.

So we have an entire generation of us “taken out” and metaphorically wasted.

On a social civil society viewpoint, the War – yet another undeclared expansion of government power – launched a splitting of America – racially, between patriotic and unpatriotic, between socialist and conservative, between the old and the new, between the modest and the Hollywood prono, between the workers and the takers, between the workers and the welfare-ists, between those individualists and those that live off the government.

I don’t see a biography of the white irish-german catholics ripped asunder and never to recover in your history proposal. I am not sure that the Fifities were the ideal we see on old TV shows, but I know everything since has NOT been better.

That should be in your history lesson.

Hope this ramble helps define what history should be taught,

John

 

 

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Cablevision and a seasonal shore house

Wednesday, February 1, 2006

Dear State Regualtor: Cablevision is the cable tv provider for my shore house. Lest you think I’m rich, it’s a family bugalow. Before Cablevision, the cable company recognized that we were a mostly seasonal community. Now, Cablevision is “milking” us as if we were year round. Before we’d buy a seasonal subscription and there was never a hassel. It would magically go on April 1st and shut off on October 1st. And everyone was happy. Now nothing in the infrastructure has changed. But, Cablevision wants a us to pay $16 per month in the winter and ~$50 in the summer. If we don’t they’ll disconnect us in the fall and reconnect in the summer. BUT, we have to pay them a diconnect fee, a reconnect fee, be there when we reconnect, and go thru all these hassels. Not counting our time, guess what? The $16/month for the six months works out to just about the sames as the winter rate. So, I think we are being played for fools. If there was a cost effective alternative, then I’d tke it. So here we have a state sanctioned monopoly gouging the customers. Now may right now I can’t do anything. And, maybe right now you can do anything. But, Cablevision should have no doubt that there will come a day when the situation will change. Perhaps you can help them understand, then need a better business model. fjr

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