Guarantees

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When I was young, my father insisted on gifting us Craftsman brand tools every year, even though we didn’t need them and sometimes couldn’t handle them. Much of what he owned came from that brand, in which he had great confidence, and he wanted us to have the same quality tools he had when we reached adulthood and had need of them. His foresight proved better than he ever imagined, for Craftsman, once known for its lifetime guarantee, changed the provisions of this guarantee as replacement costs mounted and threatened the company’s financial solvency. They’re still good tools, but the guarantee isn’t as good as it once was.

Our politicians in this general election seem to think the Constitution guarantees the populace things that it neither mentions nor empowers our elected officials to promise us. Unlike the bigwigs at Craftsman, these men, of little scope and vision, fail to realize that no guarantee lasts in perpetuity. Nothing great was ever won without sacrifice, and at some point in order to meet these obligations some people will have to sacrifice.

Barack Obama creates rights in the Constitution, forgetting that with rights come responsibilities. The Constitution does not promise us largess or success. Remember that the Nazis promised Mercedes in every garage and Mousollini promised the trains would run on time. The moment government tries to guarantee something, it will fail. Everyone voting for Obama thinks that they will be recipients, that his references to the brotherly obligation in Matthew will bind producers to serve them. Never forget however that his brother lives in a shack in Kenya on $20US/year or that a half-aunt living in a Boston slum hasn’t seen Obama in years. He doesn’t care much about his own family; how could he possibly really care about yours? In the end, he wants to use other people’s money, regardless of his greater capability to serve as benefactor, meaning that to compensate for his reticence many more people will have to pay and they in turn will not receive.

Too many voters buy into the notion of change and the promises of pelf, “that some people have too much and that we need to take from them and give to you, you still expect what? You still expect a grand life. You expect a life of prosperity. You expect greater income; you expect a bigger house; you expect a second car. It's just that you think it's going to come from some politician taking it away from somebody else (Rush Limbaugh).” Why do we expect that? What have we done to deserve it- be born? That was the attitude of the gentry, to inherit by birth and not on merit. Even then, birth inheritance is tenuous at best. Name recognition makes a poor guarantee.

Obama’s economic proposal doesn’t guarantee anything that will last. If you keep taking money from the “rich”, eventually they will stop producing, and then from whom will he steal it? Like McCain said on 27 October, Obama’s more interested in controlling wealth than creating it. He’s not building a better mousetrap; he’s not even interested in building more. All he wants is to reshuffle them so everyone has the same amount.

In the movie “Bruce Almighty”, Bruce makes this same mistake. When he answers prayers of everyone who wants to win the lottery, everyone ends up winning about $5 and they are mad. If you distribute down a guaranteed return to everyone without recognition of merit, nobody ends up with enough to make it worth their while. When Governor Kenny Guinn parsed out our DMV rebates a few years ago, by the time the money was doled out, I received $75, which didn’t even cover the registration on my Dodge Ram, and since I received it just before that registration was due, I just sent it all back. People remember he gave us money back, but I say big deal.

McCain makes a lot of mistakes, but he gets at the point of guarantees very well. Obama promises fairness, but there’s nothing fair about driving our economy into the ground. If he has his way, eventually, the source of funds will go bust, and then everyone is guaranteed buttkiss as return on their investment. What good is a warranty if the company that issued it ceases to exist? What good are government bonds from a country that defaults on its obligations? He’s selling us on whisps of air, and if we rely on such flightiness we will find the entire world choking for breath.