Rants of a Fuzzy Curmudgeon

Monday, 18 June 2018 09:06

General Curmudgeonry, Perennial Indignancy Watch, Perversity of Humanity, Progressive Derangement

It’s time for a vacation, so I won’t be posting regularly for a couple of weeks.

What?

Oh…well…yeah, how is that different from when I’m not on vacation? Not much.

Although I HAVE done pretty well at doing two posts a week for the last few weeks.

So PHBBBBBBBBT.

Anyway, posting will be (as we say in the amateur radio community) “holiday style” till the end of the month, meaning, I’ll post when I damn well please and about what I damn well please. Even if it’s just beach and sunset pictures.

Aloha, baby.

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Turnabout is fair play, except when it isn’t

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Friday, 15 June 2018 11:16

At work, we recently had a customer who wanted to partake in the training courses for our software. Training is generally done by one of our consultants, who (these days, anyway) does a GoToMeeting or Skype screen-sharing session for that purpose.

It will probably not surprise anyone that I work with a bunch of left-wing progressive types. That seems to be common in IT anymore. But our product is purchased by companies and organizations that span the political spectrum. And as a result, for many, many years, I have had to deal with certain customers whose ideology I considered (and still consider) repugnant. But by and large, the people I dealt with were gracious, intelligent, and kept ideology and politics out of the relationship.

And that’s fine with me. In my opinion, we’re not doing business with their ideology. They are paying us a significant chunk of change for our product (and additional coin for the training), which in and of itself is non-ideological. What they do with it after they purchase it is their business, not ours (so long as they’re not spamming with it — we’re death on spammers). I’ve been dealing with people in business for a long, long time, and frankly all I care about is that their money is good. Everyone with a message is free to distribute that message in any media they choose.*

Therefore it should come as no surprise that refusing to deal with a customer for ideological reasons is not a viable excuse in my book. But we had two of our engineers who refused on principle to provide the training for this customer. One said flatly that he did not know if he could control himself if he were required to train them. The other made wishy-washy mouth noises about how he did not feel he could train well on this subject and asked to be excused — but I know what his political philosophy is, and I know he knows the product better than that.

We did end up providing the training, but we had to pull in one of the product developers to do it. Which was interesting, but not optimal — he has other things to do and training is not his bailiwick.

So let’s think about that for a moment.

This really is not the same thing as the wedding photographer or the baker who is forced against his or her religious beliefs to use their creativity in support of events that go against the grain of those religious beliefs.** Naturally, the left will claim that training a right-wing organization to use the company’s sofware is a violation of the personal beliefs of the engineers who refused to do that training, but hang on a sec.

The wedding photographer and baker are (more than likely, and in all cases to date I think they were) sole proprietors or, at most, partners in a family business — that is, working for themselves. They are perfectly able to determine for themselves what jobs they want to take on, and what jobs they do not want to take on. The fact that their religious ideology precludes them creating art for gay couples is what has gotten them in trouble. Being honest about that didn’t help. On the other hand, the people who entered their shops and offices and asked for their services more than likely did so for the specific purpose of landing them in court and forcing them to do things that they believed violated their religious freedoms.***

In our case, without a word being said by the organization in question other than “We’d like to pay for training,” our two brave engineers said “We’re not playing that” — and they did so strictly because of the ideological bent of the customer in question.

However.

The two engineers aren’t the company. They don’t own the company, they don’t call the shots. But they got away with it anyway, because the boss isn’t the kind of guy to fire someone for that sort of thing. And frankly, at least one of them would probably sue him if he did.

Nevertheless, they got away with something that a number of folks on the other side of the political spectrum got called on the legal carpet for. The company didn’t suffer because we found someone else to provide the training. But our engineers hid behind the corporate monolith and none of that got out to the customer, who was just happy to be trained.

Because I know the makeup and history of the customer, I have exactly zero doubt that, had either of our engineers been independent consultants who had refused to service the customer’s request for training and said it was because of the customer’s ideology, they would have wound up in court answering a judge’s questions as to why not. Turnabout is fair play, and the customer would not have hesitated to file that sort of legal grievance.

Hiding behind the corporate wall, though, these two got away with it.

And that irritates the hell out of me. Because I’m absolutely certain both of them think — no, they firmly believe — the wedding photographer and the cake baker were wrong. That they don’t see their own situation the same way only proves once again that progressives don’t give a fuck about you — it’s all about them and their feelings.

______________

* Recipients of the message, however, are also just as free to dump it straight into the trash.

** Which is my round-about way of saying, “in support of gay weddings”.

*** Frankly, they would have been better off saying, “Sorry, our schedule is full up and we simply can’t take any new orders/jobs right now.” And I’ll make the point that it seems like refusing to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple due to strongly-held religious beliefs about homosexuality doesn’t sound all that different from refusing to serve blacks or Irish or Jews because of the color of their skin or their national origin or their non-Christian religion. If you start saying you won’t do X for person Y because of Z, when Z has something to do with the other person’s beliefs and prejudices, it’s a goddamned slippery slope back to the back of the bus or separate drinking fountains or simply refusing to serve someone because you don’t like their ancestors back in the old country. And it’s VERY hard to reconcile the fact that on one hand, we have the concept of freedom of association and freedom of religion, while on the other hand, we have the 14th Amendment and the Civil Rights Acts which say we’re supposed to treat everyone the same.

And yeah, this is a footnote rather than a full-on philosophical post of its own, because I am fucking confused about the whole thing myself. It’s why I won’t take a real stand on the subject, other than to note that the only time anyone seems to care is when it’s a left-winger trying to force a right-winger to do something the right-winger doesn’t want to do, and never the other way around. That’s the unfair part, and it’s the part I tend to focus on rather than worrying about people’s religious or ideological stances.

Either apply the law indiscriminately, or fuck the goddamn law. And that’s my bottom line.

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Let Democrats take over, they want to take your guns.

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Wednesday, 13 June 2018 11:39

Dear Councilman,

I am deeply disappointed that the City-County Council will be taking up Proposal 112 at its meeting this evening.

This resolution is, first of all, an attempt to violate the rights of law-abiding citizens. But more importantly, it is completely meaningless, because the State of Indiana has statewide preemption of firearms regulation. It’s clear that the council recognizes that fact, because Proposal 112 is merely a resolution to write a strongly-worded letter to the General Assembly, which will simply laugh it off.

However, the council will waste valuable debate time over something that makes absolutely no difference in the grand scheme of things, but which can be waved around like a bloody flag at election time to prove that certain council members have checked off all of the correct political position boxes. Banning weapons from the law-abiding public does not make them safer, as anyone who follows “armed citizen” reports would know. But isn’t ensuring public safety part of the council’s bailiwick? How do you do that when you take away the right of self-defense and “when seconds count, the police are only minutes away”?

Were the council truly interested in reducing gun violence in the City of Indianapolis, it would be encouraging efforts to enforce the myriad of existing gun laws, but more importantly, it would be taking steps to clean up the drug, gang, and homeless problems from which the City suffers. Insisting on banning so-called “assault” weapons and high-capacity magazines is not how you clean up these problems – it simply removes the option of self-defense from law-abiding citizens, while those who are uncaring about the law and willing to break it will always find a way to obtain banned weapons.

We need only look to the City of Chicago and the problems they have with outlaws obtaining guns, regardless of having some of the strictest anti-gun laws on the books. The City of Deerfield has been handed a setback in court regarding its attempt to remove weapons from its city limits. The day of this sort of restriction is past; only dinosaurs and progressives are still pushing to strip us of the right to self-defense.

The fact is that laws are for the law-abiding. It is an exercise in futility to enact legislation in the hope that the lawless will obey it. The City of Indianapolis has better things to work on than debating useless measures such as Proposal 112.

Sincerely,
Fuzzy Curmudgeon

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General Curmudgeonry, Perennial Indignancy Watch, These Are The Crazy Years, Trump Derangement Syndrome Watch

Many reasons Democrats seek Trump’s impeachement

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Thursday, 7 June 2018 10:17

blares the headline over the letter to the editor in Monday’s WSJ. A gentleman from Massachusetts opines that an op-ed from May 26 “notes that ‘many Democrats want to impeach Mr. Trump because they simply don’t like him.'”

He continues,

That’s a misleading oversimplification. Many Democrats (at least the ones I speak to) are happy to explain why they don’t like him. They don’t like him because he makes America unsafe, because of his disdain for important American principles (e.g., inclusiveness, heroism, respect, etc.), valued American institutions (the White House, FBI, science) and for his manifest disrespect for potential allies and essential friends. The president’s behavior, rather than making America great again, is weakening and defacing America’s integrity, making us more vulnerable.

OK, but what’s your point? Absolutely none of that refutes the statement from the op-ed, and proves once again that the Democrats who have been agitating for Mr. Trump’s impeachment since the day after the 2016 election really don’t understand what constitutes grounds for impeachment.

The fact is that nobody cares that you don’t like him. Hell, a lot of people who voted for him aren’t really all that fond of him. But what seems more ludicrous to me is that most of the shoe this ~~fool~~ gentleman wishes to fit to Donald Trump actually fits his predecessor much, much better. Let’s take this apart a bit.

He makes America unsafe: Obama drew a line in the sand in Syria and promptly wimped out when the Syrians crossed it. His SecState allowed the US diplomatic compound in Benghazi to be overrun by insurgents. We took out Osama bin Laden on his watch, but by all accounts, he just sort of stood around and watched while Seal Team 6 did the dirty work, and then took the credit. His “leaders” in the DoD left us less prepared to go to war (and more prepared to go to culture war) than we’ve been since before World War II. Our allies considered him a joke and borderline undependable. He clearly hated Israel and actively strove to undermine Benjamin Netanyahu’s re-election bid. And of course, there’s the whole Iran “deal”. And the recognition of Cuba, which simply resulted in a bunch of our diplomatic folks having to come home because the US embassy there was being bombarded by sonic waves that made them all sick, and Trump finally bringing everyone home and suspending the opening Obama made.

Conversely, Mr. Trump has fearlessly asserted US interests in Syria and the WestPac (now known as the “Indo-Pacific”) and has called Kim Jong-Un’s nuclear bluff. Folks like the editorial staff of the WSJ think Trump is going to be steamrollered by Kim at the Singapore summit, but I suspect Kim is not going to like some of the things he hears at the summit table. Trump, not Obama, put ISIS on the run in Iraq and elsewhere. Whigning that “the plan was Obama’s” doesn’t wash, because Obama didn’t execute. Trump, not Obama, has developed excellent relations with reform-minded (and Israel-neutral, at least) Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Saudi Arabia. Trump’s SecDef “Mad Dog” Mattis is demanding that the Pentagon shape up and that the services resume preparing for war rather than turning them into the Diversity and Inclusion Corps. Trump has got Vladimir Putin over an (oil) barrel and isn’t taking Putin’s shit, regardless of all the screaming about “collusion” from the left (and if they want to complain about collusion, let’s not forget Obama’s open-mic “after the election I’ll have more flexibility” gaffe). Trump is alternately kissing up to and smacking around the Chinese to the point where I don’t think they know if they’re coming or going, and while that can be dangerous, it’s still better than letting the Chinese get away with whatever they want. Hell, even the Japanese are growing some of their backbone back and getting themselves on a war footing, now that they have some assurance the Americans will not back down in the IndoPac.

The only thing I can think of that Trump is truly getting wrong is remaining in Afghanistan, but he didn’t make that mess, he’s just trying to clean it up.

Frankly, even if we go back into Cold War mode because Trump is asserting US global power, that’s fine with me. We’ve sat on our complacent asses spending the non-existent “peace dividend” for far too long.

His disdain for important American principles (e.g., inclusiveness, heroism, respect, etc.): Come on. This is Obama projection writ large. Obama never met an American principle he didn’t disdain. Any time he stepped up for Americanism, it was because it was part of his job, not because he believed in it. He certainly pooh-poohed the concept of American Exceptionalism, and his wife made it clear that the only thing that made her happy to be an American was the election of her worthless husband.

Trump, on the other hand, is all about American Exceptionalism. He includes everyone, doesn’t care if they’re white, black, Asian, Hispanic, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Zoroastrian, gay, lesbian, what the hell ever. For goodness’ sake, his daughter married an Orthodox Jew. His only criteria is patriotism and a love of this country. He came down hard on the NFL anthem kneelers because he found their attitude unpatriotic and not a little rude to the people who were paying their inflated salaries. To this day, mediocre NFL player Colin Kaepernick doesn’t have a job because he is unrepentant and has cost the NFL billions of dollars and millions of fans — not because Donald Trump tweeted about what a jerk he is.

Trump is all about heroism. He supports our military and wants it to excel as it has in the past. He is deeply respectful of all of the things that make America great. He clearly dislikes cowards, traitors, and people who want to tear America off the pedestal it has occupied since it became the World’s Policeman after WWII.

Now, if someone would just take his Twitter account away…

[His disdain for] valued American institutions (the White House, FBI, science): Um, what? Apparently the Obamas left the White House in tatters, and Trump’s comments about the White House right after his inauguration were about infrastructure maintenance (the replacement/installation of new air conditioning ductwork, as I recall) that was making the House unlivable. Because the White House generally doesn’t get redecorated on the taxpayers’ dime, for people like the Obamas who don’t give a shit, it’s not a priority, and yeah, the place was probably fairly ratty after eight years of neglect.

The FBI…how do you write something like that with the shit that is coming out about the FBI? The inspector general’s report is apparently scathing. Things haven’t been this bad at the FBI since Hoover was running it. In fact, as bad as Hoover was, the folks who have been running the FBI for the last decade or so seem to have been even worse. How can you blame Donald Trump for “disdain” of the FBI when it’s starting to look like that’s an attitude mirrored by the majority of the citizenry?

And since when is “science” a “valued American institution”? Science in this country has been going to shit for years, turning into a biased handmaiden of diversity and the left. I note that the writer did not come right out and say “climate science”, because that’s really what has most people’s knickers in a knot. I disdain climate science, too, because it’s international propaganda bullshit aimed at making the US no better than any other shithole country in the world. And yes, there’s that word: “Shithole”. Which is what the Obamas were trying to make of America for eight years. So thank you Donald Trump for withdrawing us from the joke of a Paris Agreement.

[H]is manifest disrespect for potential allies and essential friends: Again, what? Sorry, again, that’s Obama projection. May one simply mention “Israel”? And one presumes that the writer thinks Iran was a potential ally and essential friend? Man, has he drunk the Kool-Aid, with extra-strength cyanide.

Donald Trump knows who our allies and friends are. Well…we don’t have any friends. Because there are no friends in global diplomacy. We have allies, of course. But anyone who has ever studied American Diplomatic History (raises hand) knows, nobody is our friend, and we should not be acting as if they are — not even the “special relationship” Brits. Trump’s genius is that he knows how to pat an ally on the back until the tip of a hidden knife blade appears from between his fingers and pricks the ally’s skin — and then he promises to remove the blade if the ally will simply agree with him that America’s interests come first.

I keep trying to tell people that you have to evaluate Trump as a businessman — not as a politician. Politicians are always hail-fellow-well-met types or they don’t succeed in politics. Trump is not a politician. He’s a businessman and he makes deals. You make business deals by making an offer that’s probably outrageous in some way, the other side counters with something a little less outrageous, and then you meet somewhere in the middle. If other countries truly understood how Trump is trying to use tariffs, we wouldn’t be dancing around the edge of a trade war. But with Trump, it’s always about the Deal, and the Deal is always negotiable.

The president’s behavior, rather than making America great again, is weakening and defacing America’s integrity, making us more vulnerable. Nah. This is the Democrat/progressive short view. They can’t take the long view anymore because they’ve weakened their intellectual chops so badly as a result of their Gramscian march through the institutions. They simply aren’t capable of pulling all of the things Trump is doing together and seeing how there is going to be some short-term pain for long-term gain. But that’s what has to be done, because frankly, the progs have dropped us so deeply into the pit that we’re going to be a while getting out of it.

What the progs really want is a third Obama term, and they thought Hillary! was going to give it to them. The American people seem to be a little smarter than that. Although in fairness, the progs’ champion ran a pretty poor campaign for someone who’s been in politics for most of her life. Must be pretty harsh to get beaten by a guy who’d never run for a political office in his life.

The bottom line here is that it looks to me like Mr. Lawrence H. Climo of Lincoln, Massachusetts, simply made Allen Guelzo’s (the author of the original op-ed) case for him, viz., “Many Democrats want to impeach Mr. Trump because they simply don’t like him.” Mr. Climo has brought absolutely nothing to the table to refute that and has made himself and his compatriots simply look more petulant and silly than Mr. Guelzo intended.

Progressive Trump Derangement Syndrome. On second thought, let us not go there. ‘Tis a silly place.

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Just a quick post

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Wednesday, 6 June 2018 15:27

General Curmudgeonry, Perennial Indignancy Watch, These Are The Crazy Years, Trump Derangement Syndrome Watch

to acknowledge the blog’s 16th birthday.

Yes, the blog is now old enough to drive.

It’s also the anniversary of the end of the Battle of Midway, 76 years ago, so look sharp for those Zeros coming in from 12 o’clock high.

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Here is a fucking non-story

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Tuesday, 5 June 2018 11:05

Newsweek (they’re still in business???) opines,

“Trump’s White House Won’t Acknowledge June As LGBT Pride Month, Even As Everyone Else Does”

ORLLY?

I don’t acknowledge June as LGBT Pride Month, pretty much the same as I don’t acknowledge February as Black History Month or March as Women’s History Month. Sounds like an appeal to authority to me — because frankly, “everyone else” more than likely doesn’t.

I doubt many people I know — even the gay ones — give June much thought, other than, “jeebus cripes it’s fucking hot already???” and “fuck my life, where did all these damn bugs come from?” (Then there’s my wife, yelling, “Why am I not at the beach?“, but hell, she yells that all the time.)

Frankly, I’d be perfectly happy if the White House didn’t acknowledge any of these special days, weeks, or months. The President is not my daddy and doesn’t need to celebrate holidays (or soi-disant “days”, “weeks”, or “months”, for that matter) as an example to me, and he shouldn’t need to be setting an example for anyone else, either. His job is to run the damn country, not fuck about like a royal and spend half his time on photo ops, ribbon cuttings, and special proclamations. He’s not a king (even if his predecessor thought he was).

Oh, and about his predecessor? First crack out of the box, the article bemoans, “After years of precedent set by Barack Obama, President Donald Trump is breaking from tradition by failing to recognize June as LGBT Pride Month.” Snort. Excuse me. “Years of precedent.” Not more than 8 years, surely. Some tradition. Breaking with tradition would be, oh, more like Trump not issuing a Thanksgiving Day proclamation. Or not lighting a White House Christmas Tree, or (like Obama) being a fucking traitor to his country.

Come on, let’s face it. LGBT activists (who, like most activists, probably don’t actually speak for the vast majority of the people they claim to represent) are simply a bunch of whigney bitches who are upset because President Trump refused to recognize “their” month. Please see above for my attitude about random celebratory days, weeks, and months.

Frankly, if we’re going to celebrate such things, we ought to be celebrating American History Year in perpetuity, and be on our knees daily thanking G-d that we live in a country that is still as free as this one is.

All these days, weeks, and months “celebrating” various bits and pieces of our “diverse” heritage do little more than Balkanize us, which I am certain is the point; get us all going for each other’s throats instead of co-existing peacefully as unhyphenated-Americans in a grand melting pot of cultures.

Which, by the way, is what made us the greatest nation on Earth. That’s what Barack Obama and his ilk truly hate about America. The only proper response to that sort of hatred is, “Go fuck yourselves.”

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Unintended consequences are a bitch

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Thursday, 31 May 2018 18:01

And ABC is probably going to find that out now that they’ve cancelled Roseanne based on a fairly mild racist idiot tweet from Roseanne Barr that I won’t bother to repeat here. The article I read in the WSJ earlier today suggested that killing that production put hundreds of people out of work. And talk about a knee-jerk reaction. Would ABC have been so quick to kill a show that made fun of Donald Trump or one of his minions? I mean, NBC has never cancelled Saturday Night Live, and it’s been ragging on GOP presidents and other conservatives pretty much from day one. ESPN (a division of ABC/Disney) lost a huge number of viewers and billions of dollars over the anthem kneeling in the NFL, by all reports. But they never used their bully pulpit to tell the NFL to put a stop to it or they’d take them off the air.

Well, here’s what I think about Roseanne.

I think she actually may have some personal liking for Trump, possibly from back in his days as a TV celeb. She might even have voted for him. But she’s independent as hell, plus she’s a few bricks shy of a full load to begin with. It wasn’t the Ambien talking — just like booze, the Ambien simply loosened her tongue, and out poured the resident evil. If indeed it was Ambien at all, she’s said some pretty outré things in the past without any apparent need for chemical encouragement. When they said she’d come out as a conservative, I was honestly shocked, because I couldn’t stand her the first time around because she was such a damn liberal (as we called progressives back in the day).

A friend said he thought her conservatism was a sham, set up to give conservatives a black eye with this racist tweet and the resulting hooroar (as Pogo would have put it). I doubt that. The left is not generally smart enough to play the long game anymore. Their march through the institutions destroyed any chance of them bringing in a new generation of truly smart, well-educated leftists. Everything they’ve done lately has seemingly been for immediate gratification, and most of it has boomeranged on them. They’re scared to death of the Trump phenomenon, and it shows in their panic as the polls, which had them blue-waving in November, are inexorably turning against them.

Not that I trust the polls, but I find it interesting that Trump is polling as high as he is, and that the generic Congressional voter poll is in a statistical tie. Either the pollsters are trying to scare Democrat voters out of the woodwork and into the polling stations, or Trump’s numbers are really higher than the polls let on. Or both.

My guess is that Dem turnout in November will be down significantly, as many of them will be too depressed to cast a ballot. But the GOP needs to GOTV or it may be a wash regardless.

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Jobs pay what the employer can afford.

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Tuesday, 29 May 2018 09:02

Seems like a simple concept, but I keep seeing posts on social media about how teachers/nurses/first responders/etc. should be paid a lot more than they already are. Which sounds like a good idea if you don’t think about where the money is going to come from. The latest one I saw involved the question of why a major league ball player should make millions of dollars for throwing a ball around (and occasionally hitting one, or tossing one in a hoop or some such) and nurses get paid squat for saving lives.

Well, shoot, folks. If you’re willing to pay big bucks to go to the ballpark, you and maybe 20,000 of your best friends, and they get TV money and radio money and all that, the team can afford to pay a pitcher (say) the big bucks. And the pitcher is going to be able to pitch for maybe 10 years. Some last longer, some don’t. And they’re always an injury away from selling used cars in a bad suit, no matter what position or sport they play. If they’re going to have to retire in their mid-30’s, they’d better hope they put away enough money to keep their family going for the rest of their life, or that they actually got a college degree that’s worth something and can get a decent job after sportsball using that.

On the other hand, hospitals generally don’t see the big bucks. Yeah, it’s horrifically expensive to get anything done in a hospital, but you don’t see the overhead for operations, insurance, and everything else that makes the hospital run. Believe me, I’ve sat in hospitals, and I have no idea how they come up with that much money to keep the place running. Hospitals are unbelievably complex and massively expensive operations, from basic infrastructure right down to the scalpel the surgeon is using to operate or the cold washcloth the nurse uses to wake you up in the morning. (Sorry.) And in the end, hospitals pay nurses what they can afford to pay. It sucks, but it is what it is, and you can’t tell me you didn’t know the job paid what it does before you decided to do it for a career. But you’ll do that career until you retire, more than likely, and where the pitcher can pitch for maybe 10 years, you’ll be helping people for 40 or more. Will you ever make parity with the pitcher? No. But you’ll have a steady income that you don’t have to worry too much about.

Teachers are perhaps the most annoying of the “we don’t make enough money” bunch, because most of them ARE public employees, and they get paid by your local municipality or county or state taxing you to pay them. They work at schools that are also paid for on the backs of the taxpayer. And there’s a point at which the taxpayer isn’t going to stand to be taxed any more. But teachers insist that they are worth more than they are paid, constantly, to the point where you want to punch their lights out when they start threatening to go on strike, and tell them they should have picked another damn career if they wanted to make more money. It’s enough to make a man home school his children. If he had children. But I digress.

But again, a teacher has got a much more secure career and income than that pitcher we were talking about does.

Now me, I haven’t had a raise in five years, and what I got five years ago was a COLA raise. In the past five years I’ve been handed more responsibility than ever before. Five years ago, nobody worked for me. Today I have six engineers working for me. But I don’t complain (much), even though I feel I’m underpaid, because I would not make the kind of money I make today if I worked for someone else. And you can’t beat the Cadillac health insurance policy I don’t pay for and for which we pay a pittance for my wife’s coverage. But I chose wisely 23 years ago without realizing it, even if I do want to kill my boss on a regular basis. (Kidding. Mostly.)

In an ideal world, everyone would have everything they need and more. But it’s not an ideal world, and nothing anyone can say or do is ever going to make it one. And teachers and nurses and police and firemen and EMTs and paramedics and medtechs are always going to be underpaid, even as vital as they are to our modern society, because there just isn’t enough money out there to do more for them.

I’m sorry about that. If I were king of the world, and wealth was unlimited, I’d do something about it. Meantime, the government robs me every chance it gets and wastes half of what it takes on the undeserving and on gratuitous boondoggles they hope we never notice. If we want to pay folks what they’re really worth, the first thing we need to do is stop the grand theft called income taxation.

And to be honest with you, the first people I’d give a fat raise to would be the military. Because without the military protecting our freedom, nobody is going to make big bucks doing much of anything.

Unless maybe they’re a collaborator.

So until you’re willing to take an honest look at why middle-class wages and salaries are insufficient, and admit that it’s because the government takes nearly half (or maybe more than half) of your paycheck in taxes, fees, and suchlike (and please don’t forget that, at least in Indiana, the governor* adds 7% to your purchases — and 9% if you eat in a restaurant anywhere in Marion County, 8% in the “doughnut” counties), then frankly, I’m not interested in your pissing and moaning about how it’s not fair that you work so hard for so little.

Especially teachers. You fuckers (most of you) are unionized. Maybe you should take an honest look at how your unions are spending your dues money. You probably won’t like what you see.

_______________

* Yeah, we joke about “7% for the governor”, but the fact is, it’s the legislature that imposes taxes on us, including the 1%/2% “dining taxes” to pay for a football stadium that was torn down before a dollar of the principal on its loans and bonds was paid off, and the billion-dollar boondoggle that took its place (and that Jimmy Irsay now owns in all but fee simple). The governor just signs off on their work (and his veto can be overridden if the legislature feels strongly enough about it). So before you go hanging the Gov off of Oliver Morton’s statue, you might want to consider finding 150 lampposts along Capitol Avenue to string up our state legiscritters, first.

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