Old and new what I think

A TAX REBATE TO ‘STIMULATE THE ECONOMY’ 1/24/08

The government just keeps getting better and better. Several thoughts come right to mind on this, the first being that if they can afford to give everyone back money, doesn’t this mean that taxes are too high to begin with?
The next thought is what the hell good is $600 going to do-$1200 for a couple - yeah, right, that’ll make maybe one mortgage payment and what do they do for the next 11 months of the year?
Does everyone elected in Washington check their brains and common sense at the city limits? Seems like it, and judging from the looks of the ongoing campaigning it isn’t going to improve, at least not in my reading of the actions and comments of the ‘top’ Democratic candidates a their recent debate. I only watched a fraction of it, on the news, but that was enough to make me glad I hadn’t tried to watch it all. Going at each other like that - what are they, six years old on the playground fighting over whose ball it is. Get real, grow up and take a look at what you should be paying attention to, people! Why in the world would Americans want a leader who acts like that. What are you going to do in international situations, point fingers and go ‘neener, neener, neener’?
But I digress. We were talking about the tax rebate and the economy. We’re heading into a recession or worse. Is anyone else worried? There’s no leadership, nobody who will address the primary (IMHO) reason* for the inflation that is causing the recession.
* Oil. Plain and simple. America runs on oil (with apologies to Dunkin’ Donuts for their ad campaign). Not coffee, not empty promises, not tax rebates. Oil. America is dependent on our cars and our trucks. Americans in a large part of the country are dependent on oil to heat their homes. We love our plastic, which is made from - oil. We love our synthetic fabrics, which are made from - oil. We love our stuff, all of which has to be brought to us in trucks which use large amounts of diesel fuel, made from - oil. And that last, ladies and gentlemen, is a huge part of inflation. What do you have that didn’t travel to you in a truck? When that truck has to pay about $1.00 for each mile the wheels turn to bring it to you, who do you think pays? Not the seller, not the truck owner or driver. Eventually, you pay. More. More for your lumber to build homes, computers to write things like this, clothes made from synthetic or natural fibers, plastics and food. Plus, it costs the farmer more to grow the food because he puts fuel into his machinery to do it. It costs more for the factory to make the plastics and clothes and computers because they have to heat them with oil. And so on.
So, when oil prices go through the star-studded Middle-Eastern desert sky, Americans take it in the pocketbook.
The government, instead of puffing up their reputation with a miniscule term ‘solution’ needs to work on a long, long, long term one. Because it ain’t gonna get any better, Scooter, it’s just gonna get worse.
What is the solution? Hell if I know. But maybe if they paid more attention to what’s going on at home instead of a war that will never be won, more attention to really doing good by the people instead of what bad things their opponent may or may not have done when they were a teenager, more attention to what the average American needs are, the Grand Mysterious They could find a workable answer.
And we can help. Not buying gas for a single day - not gonna do it - because you’ll just buy it another day. But if you walk or car pool one day, now that will make a difference. Turn the furnace down a tad. Buy local grown products. Shop local and help out your neighbors. Do with less.

3/13/09:
The above never made it to the blog, although some parts of it did in another one. I’ll try to wrap it up, without getting into more political commentary.
So now one of the above mentioned finger pointers has been elected and sworn in and is implementing his plans. Are they helping? Too soon to tell. What’s the country gonna come to? Too soon to tell.
The oil prices did come down (yeah, right, gas got cheaper as I was coming back from my 7,500 mile vacation trip!), thank goodness. But with all the other crap, that one thing hasn’t meant a whole lot. Jobs being lost, business going under, people loosing homes, money (add me to that list, my ‘retirement’ investments are down by about half, not that I was ever gonna retire anyway but that’s another blog), people reacting in tragic ways.
All we can do is hope that things reverse or at least stop going down soon and that the new government’s ideas can help. And that the people have learned some thing from all of this, although I doubt it.
Above I mentioned oil as a main reason for the inflation. It is, but there are so many more. And one of them, as Pogo once said, is ‘we is met the enemy and he is us’. Yup, a lot of the general public is our own worst enemy. We want more of everything: at work more pay, more benefits – where do you think that comes from? DUH – not the company’s profits, nope, they give you more and start to charge more, so everybody has to pay more and then they want more, too, and up and up it goes. DUH.
And having to have more things. The biggest, newest, brightest, best of it all. And the big stores having to expand to try to take over the market – more, more, more. And now all of a sudden it’s less, less, less.
Where’s it gonna stop? Who knows, but we are in that recession we were worried about a year ago. Let’s hope somehow it gets stopped and soon. And again, let’s do our own little bits to help.