The Power Of Observation And The Flexibility Of Dates

Here I am sitting around at 10:30 on a Monday morning enjoying myself a lazy day.
It’s an unusually mild morning for a Capitol Region November.
It’s one of those days where it is warm enough to throw open the windows, yet cool enough that having a light blanket draped over your shoulders feels amazingly cozy in the balmy breeze.

Normally at this time I’d be on a break from work.
I’d still be on my computer, but in a far less comfortable place.
I’d also be required to be wearing pants.
(I’m in shorts, get your minds out of the gutter)
The reason I’m able to just sit around today is because today, November 12th, is Veteran’s day (Observed).
Oddly enough, this bothers me a little.

Now, I shared my appreciation of our fighting men and women yesterday.
I don’t mind also doing so today.
It’s not something I’d mind doing every day.
After all, I believe that each of us needs to remember that Freedom is not free.
It comes with all types of prices that we tend to forget about.
That’s the subject for another article though. (which will be written eventually)

What bugs me about today is that somebody felt the need to move the official observation (albeit temporarily) to a weekday.
I’ve thought about this, and the only reason for doing it that makes any kind of sense to me is to guarantee Veteran’s day as a day off of work (for those in eligible jobs, that is)

While I don’t mind having the day off I can’t help but wonder if that cheapens the purpose of the day just a little bit.
I know that it wasn’t intended to take away from the 11th itself.
Plus, it does give a day off to people that work for companies that only give Federal Holidays off.
Which days like today are sorely needed in those places.

Now, despite my feelings on the subject, I’m not going to be one of those people that boycotts anything to do with today (That’s right, Angelina Jolie, I’m looking at you.  get the stick out of your butt and let Brad have some turkey this Thanksgiving.)
Instead, I think what’s best is if we look at it from a different point of view.
I don’t think that we have to choose which Veteran’s Day to celebrate, Actual or Observed.
We should choose to observe both.
Let an extra day serve as an additional reminder of why we have everything we love so much in life.

So, even if you did so yesterday, go out of your way to thank any serviceman or woman that you see.
I guarantee you that they never hear it enough.

Let’s Play The Blame Game

I don’t know about you, but personally I’m ecstatic that election season is over.
Not just because I don’t have to see the commercials either.
This year we seemed to have bigger Blame Game tournaments than in previous elections.
Of course, there were a number of issues that prompted it.

I believe that The Blame Game’s popularity is rooted in the fact that we’re a Pop-Culture society.
Media and Fiction alike have trained us to look for that one individual who is the cause of the grief.
Television shows have taught us to look for that culprit, and when we find them, eliminate them.
In The Fugitive it was the One-Armed man.  In GI Joe it was Cobra Commander.  In Harry Potter it’s Voldemort. Joss Whedon even came along and assigned a label that stuck, “The Big Bad”

In reality we have now taken to looking for “The Big Bad” so we can pin the blame for all of our strife on that individual.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t always work out that well.

One of the biggest issues this time around was responsibility for the Corporate Bailouts.
Large groups of people took to pointing fingers at Obama and Congress while fixing the elected officials with their best angry eyes.
I can even understand this to a point.
Our elected officials are familiar faces.
They made promises, we trusted them to fulfill those promises.
They also have a responsibility to protect us, their constituents.
When it comes to the spectacular disaster that the bailouts turned out to be it’s also easy to feel that they have failed us.
That tends to be when people stop looking for answers, well, real answers at least.
It’s too easy to feel satisfied that the first culprit you’ve identified is the right culprit.
Which is very wrong of us.
Heck, even in most TV shows the first guy caught for the crime is the wrong guy.
Even the politicians that didn’t support the bailouts started catching flack.
Which, in turn, made the bailouts the largest piece of fodder used in the campaign mud slinging matches.

This, I think, is what really turned my stomach about this election year.
I became extremely agitated over the bailout accusations.
Seriously, it was over the top, and very misdirected.
Never in any of the arguments I heard regarding the elections did I hear anyone stop and accuse the Corporations of any wrong-doing in reference to the bailouts.
Now, prior to the election there was talk of Big Business and it’s liability.
much of that was ignored because it was said by Occupy, Independents, and Anarchist type individuals.
Very few mainstream people stopped to think, well, the businesses were given the moneys to stimulate their business via growth, marketing, and hiring and they somehow pissed it all away while many corporate officers received raises.
Somehow the game of politics has removed any culpability from the part of the Corporations.
Despite the fact that they didn’t hold up their end of the bargain.
Nobody wants to think that the bailouts might have been a radical plan that the politicos might have been hoping would be a tremendous success so that they could brag about it and skyrocket in the popularity polls.
No, people would just rather assume that the officials decided to screw over the populace at the command of their capitalistic overlords.
Here’s what you have to remember about politicians, they know what side their bread is buttered on.
It’s buttered on one side by big business, and on the other side by Middle America.
They figure that if their bread is buttered on both sides and they should fall, at least they’ll land standing.
What it really means is that when they fall it’s in an uncontrollable spiral and they have no idea how to land.
…As they’re now finding out.
In one light you can see why they’d attempt something like this.
Successful radical actions have proven quite prosperous in the past.
People still talk about how FDR saved the country* (despite how many laws he broke doing this)

I’m not a conspiracy theorist.
I don’t go digging up the hidden agendas.
I like looking at the links that are visible to us all and letting common sense and logic guide me.
That hasn’t been so easy with the bailouts.
There are a lot of questions that need to be answered.
There are companies that were bailed out that gave campaign contributions to Obama and Romney.
Yes, you read that correctly, Corporations that needed money to prevent themselves from failing had enough cash to spare to help hedge some political bets.
Isn’t that absolutely mind boggling?
Something like that is almost enough to make me reach for my copy of Catcher In The Rye while adjusting my tinfoil hat.
Sure, you’d think that the candidates might have noticed that and seen a conflict of interests.
Then again, they are the candidates, they may have just had an accountant handling the numbers and the Politicians in question only saw the totals.
But wouldn’t the Accountants have recognized the names of those contributors?
Who knows, they may be the type that immerses themselves in work and ignores society.
And even if it was noticed and brought to the attention of the candidate why wasn’t the contribution returned?
Did they think it was okay, or might it have caused too much political and media based uproar that they couldn’t afford to have?
The thing is, we can’t know, and the possibilities make the brain all hurty and squirmy.

What we can do is sit back and look at the facts available to us.
We know the corporations didn’t deliver on the promises they made.
From that we can also see that the corporations don’t think that they have to do what the elected officials tell them to do.
To top it all off, we, The American People, have proven that the corporations can do what they want and expect someone else to take the blame for it.
Don’t believe me?
By now I’m sure that most Americans have seen reports of the massive layoffs and firings that immediately followed Obama’s re-election.
You have probably also seen the angry posts blaming Obama for this loss of jobs.
Did Obama go and fire all of these individuals?   No.
The Corporations did.
Yeah, yeah, I know that you’re about to tell me that they did it in response to his re-election and what it will mean to them.
Go back several lines and re-read what was already said…the Corporations don’t give a rat’s ass about what the politician’s say or do.
So we already know that piece of blame is pure poppycock.

I just hope that the Politicians realize that they can’t rely on Big Business and avoid this kind of mistake again.
If they can’t, then the circle of accountability widens to include them, and they must accept responsibility for their actions.
As the old saying goes, Fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me twice, shame on me, and prepare to suffer the consequences.

In my opinion we should consider Corporate Bailouts to be a flawed experiment which we will never repeat.
Instead, when a company is in dire straits they need to go the Bankruptcy route.
In that case, one of three things usually happens;
1- The business collapses and fades into obscurity
2- The business identifies and fixes its problems, rising to a productive state once again.
Or
3- The business fails to repair itself and another company buys them in order to successfully rehabilitate the ailing entity through restructuring and a new business model.

Many people argue that bankruptcy leads to loss of jobs and a further burden upon the community.
In reality, it removes a business from being a burden.
Plus, if, as in option 3, another company purchases it and revives it more jobs are created, more taxable revenue is generated, and society is generally benefited.

The perfect example is when K-Mart declared bankruptcy for the last time only to be purchased by Sears Roebuck.
Sears rebuilt the image of K-Mart while maintaining K-Mart’s reputation.
They did this by targeting the weak spots in their competition’s marketing strategies and devising counter-strategies to take advantage of these weaknesses.
Now K-Mart is thriving and holding its own in the retail race.

On another note, any company that declares bankruptcy, regardless of the final outcome of said bankruptcy or means by which they achieved this final outcome, should be prohibited from making campaign contributions for a period of six to maybe eight years following the conclusion of the bankruptcy proceedings.
This will alleviate the potential for both actual indiscretions and perceived indiscretions.

Regardless, the point I’ve been trying to make is don’t settle on the easy choice when assigning blame.
Be sure you’ve considered all of the options first.
If you honestly do so you may be surprised in what you find, and even more in the conclusions it delivers.

* Whether he did save the country, or lay the foundation for future catastrophe is open to debate, preferably in another blog

Collateral Storm Damage

Every presidential election should have some impact upon history.
After all, each election is a turning point in our nation’s history, being that moment that decides how things will change.
Many elections have had memorable moments; the Kennedy debates on TV, Bill playing Sax on Arsenio, “Read my lips, no new taxes”, and the election of our first African-American president (but not our first minority president, that happened with JFK, he was Irish Catholic, that was a minority)
These are a sampling of things tjat left an impact from previous election years.

This year is already a promising year for memorable moments.
We’ve had our first candidate ever to go crowd surfing at a rally (Gary Johnson in Utah).
Locally there’s been an animalistic campaign between Doheney, Owens, Schreibman, and Gibson that almost makes us, the voters, feel dirty.
This year Third Party candidates have mad a much greater impression and gained more recognition as serious options then ever before with not just one, but two viable candidates.
And the internet, wow, it has been more influential than any other medium this time around.
With political rants, campaign posters, linked speeches, cartoons, and jokes all flying l

Like spit from a parkinson’s afflicted came’s mouth this election has been more of an onslaught than ever.

Another interesting happening is how Hurricane Sandy is being used to influence matters.
Some clever mind had themselves a stroke of genius and created a Twitter account named #Romneystormtips and posted this up:

This went viral almost instantly, retweeted quicker than the latest Lindsay Lohan nip slip.
So, of course, more had to follow.

 

 There are more, they kept on coming….for a while, that is.
Then Twitter shut down the account.
I know that some of you think that this is the end of the story.
Fear not, it isn’t.
Remember kiddies, nothing ever disappears on the internet!  Nothing!
Instead, the tips starting appearing on Tumblr instead
http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/romney’s-storm-tips

Who knows if this will honestly have any effect on the actual outcome of the election.
Although, I don’t think that it will help Romney any at all.
I guess we will find out on Tuesday.

“I Fart Because It’s The Only Gas That I Can Afford”

So, a friend of mine had to call in to work today because his loan was turned down and he can no longer afford to fill his car’s tank up.
As it turns out, it’ll be cheaper for him to hire somebody so that he can just ride their shoulders into work every day.

Hopefully all of you picked up on the sarcasm there.
If not, I’m sorry, on so many levels, for you.

Anyway, if you guessed that our topic this time around is going to be going to be gas, well, you might just be the brightest bulb in the crayon box.

It’s more about blame.
But it’s about gas, too.
Everyone is upset over gas prices.
Every day on Facebook, Twitter, and occasionally on MySpace (when people remember that it still exists and go check their account) people post where the best gas prices are locally.
Some radio stations even announce it during their Morning Zoo shows.
Gas prices are easily one of our biggest concerns.

What would you think if I told you that Gas Prices are the result of a lie?

One of the more common beliefs about oil prices is that OPEC sets the oil prices.
This is not entirely incorrect.
OPEC sets oil prices…but only for the nations that are members of OPEC.
(Which are: Algeria, Angola, Ecuador, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and Venezuela)…http://www.opec.org/opec_web/en/about_us/25.htm
[Venezuela makes me want to inquire about how much Nazi Gold was used for the start-up, and Nigeria makes me think that Princess has to stop crying poor mouth in all of those e-mails she keeps sending me]

OPEC doesn’t set the prices for any other petroleum producing companies or nations.
Yet, the cost for gas produced by domestic sources is equivalent to the cost of gas produced by OPEC sources.

Now, people have inquired time and time again why ( 1) OPEC sets their prices so high, and ( 2 ) why the government doesn’t do anything about it..

The answers:
( 1 ) Because they can.
( 2 ) Because, technically, they can’t.

Yeah, yeah, I know.  The President can put pressure on them.
And they’ll probably let up on prices, which is a good thing, right?
Right?

Well, let me tell you what was accomplished.
The world just got to see one of the super powers bully a collective of smaller nations.
Which proves all of the bad things that the smaller nations say about us.
So, while you’re happy that gas is back down to $3.00 a gallon, your happiness is fueling the vindictive justification of at least one more ideological nutjob with not enough medication and too much acces to the internets DIY Explosive Anarchy For Dummies sections.

okay, let’s get back on course before I draw a target on my back (either an extremist target, or Federal target, I don’t want either)

What people need to remember is that Oil is NOT a Government controlled commodity.
Instead, it’s a corporate product, a business.
Business may abide by governmental law, but it runs on economic principle.
The biggest factor being Supply And Demand.
That is one of the tools OPEC uses to control their prices.
But that’s OPEC.
Domestic companies issue similar prices and make more profit.
They do this because they can.
And, because no one holds them accountable.
It is their right.
And we justify their decision through our purchases.

I have a crazy idea though.
And it only takes one US company to realize the insane genius behind it.
All it takes is one company drastically reducing their prices and then issuing a statement that they undersand and feel the same economic crunch as the rest of us, and want to do their part to help.
I guarantee that every one of their gas stations would be pumped dry within 48 hours, and they’d have earned massive customer loyalty as well.
One of two things would happen.
Either the other companies would compete by lowering their prices, or they’d ignore the competition and accept spillover business.
Either way it would be a win/win.

Now we just need some executives brave enough to do it.