Help Through the Right Channels

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Everywhere I go, people ask me if I want to donate money to relief efforts in Haiti. Then, I read about how my suspicions are correct and the money goes not to the victims but to other people inbetween us and them.

The president was all excited to send basically $1 from every American to help Haiti. He took much longer to respond to a terrorist plot on Christmas Day 2009. There's no recognition in that for him, but he can seem like a standup guy giving our money to Haitians.

The FBI regularly posts reports about scams in charitable giving. These "corporations" allegedly only do good, but they are only as good as the people of which they are comprised. If you want to give, give where it will do the most good. There was a time in America when all social welfare fell to churches and townships where men of good report and character could watch with close scrutiny the actions paid for by their neighbors. Government will never do the most good to the most people. Give it to people you trust.

Body "Art"

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I know plenty of people with tatoos. I know why they have them. Some of the reasons make sense if I put myself in their shoes; some of the reasons make me shake my head. Would I ever get one? No way.

Today, Actress Helen Miren admitted that her tatoo was her only regret in life. Of all the things to regret, that's a very interesting choice.

Personally, I oppose any alteration to your body that is "permanent". I know that with surgery, almost anything can be changed, from looks to damage to even gender for crying out loud. However, without artists, this kind of change doesn't naturally occur. You cannot do this without the help of someone else.

If you have one, fine. I know many many fine people who do. Some people criticize the beard. In 10 minutes, I could be clean shaven. Nothing I do is permanent. Behind this beard is a face, but it is not me and more than I am the muscles and bones beneath that. The beard is not the man. I will be me no matter how I appear, and so will you. I have learned through the grace of God and the experiences he gave me to get to know the man behind the mask, and I promise I will do the same for you.

Do You Love Your Children?

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Every now and then, I see an RV with some variation of a sticker that disturbs me. It proclaims that they occupants are "out spending their children's inheritance". I have no problem per se with anyone who enjoys the fruit of his own labor, but I have a problem with people who enjoy the fruits of other people's labor.

A dear friend of mine was saddled with the debts her father incurred in his twilight years when he died suddenly about five years ago. Having spent his last days in riotous living, he had liquidated his assets, including his home through a reverse mortgage, without any provisions to cover the debts in the event of his death. Although he had far more holdings than he could possibly spend on such a binge, in the end, when the estate was settled, my friend was left with a debt from her own father in addition to the costs associated with his interment. It left her emotionally and financially bereft, and it took a heavy toll on her.

What parent would bankrupt his own children? Yet, that is exactly what Democrats in office do. They heap fiduciary obligations on the as-yet unborn (while they attempt to abort them) for their own aggrandizement. They never worry about how they will pay for it. There are always more rich people to tax. Yet, they are also often among the rich they propose to tax and they never seem to pay anything.

Government has nothing unless it first takes it from you. There is barely enough wealth produced in this country to cover the expenditures proposed by the current administration assuming that the government confiscatorily took every red cent from every person in this nation. They do this ostensibly in your name.

When the bill comes due, Reid, Pelosi, and perhaps even Obama himself will be long dead. A coworker of mine said it was a "plus-minus": on the plus side, he'll be dead, but on the minus side "my kids and you guys will be saddled with this shit". They don't worry about a fiscal exit strategy. They'll be entombed in effigy before we have to worry about it.

The Constitution was established to free men from bondage. Debt is a bondage. Yet, only one president ever literally reduced the Federal deficit, and he died in 1826. The basic secret to success is this: never spend more than you make. In fat times, put money away for the lean times.

When Joseph went before Pharaoh to interpret his dream, he prophesied seven years of plenty in Egypt followed by seven years of famine. During those years of plenty, the government of Egypt put grain aside, and by so doing Egypt saved much of the known world from starvation. In times of plenty, our government expands itself. That has created a huge deficit that now threatens the livelihood of everyone everywhere. My own governor, who should have laid off state workers last year, finally agrees that if 50% of the state budget pays for salaries and benefits then the state has too many employees. The new expansion must be supported by ever increasing taxes, which don't make any sense at all when people fall on hard economic times.

Do you love your children? What man among you if his son ask him for bread will give him a stone or if he asks for a fish will give him a serpent? Give your children, and the children of your neighbors, an America stronger than the one we were given, prouder than the one we found. Taxes can never be too low. Government can never be too small. The government that governs best governs least, and I believe that.

Everything Comes Around

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Several months ago, I purchased several of Einstein's books to read for myself as much as I could understand of what he wrote. While I take it on faith due to my own weaknesses in math that his equations are correct, the spherical coordinate system employed in his theory clearly make the case for a circular nature of the cosmos. What this equates to resembles (although this particular example is more elliptical) is the different cocentric lanes on a jogging track and it explains some other metaphysical phenomenae.

It has been widely proposed that karma round trips on individuals who send out acts or energies of varies wavelengths. If Einstein's model is correct, eventually the energies you send out round trip upon you or upon other people on the planet when it completes its orbit of the universe's axis and returns along the path length to the starting place. Some of these paths are longer because they lie further from the axis. Some of them are shorter because of the energetic properties of the acts of karma involved. Some of them never round trip because along the path they interact with other energies of disparate vectors and do not return.

Eventually, I believe that you reap what you sow. Sometimes things take a long time to get back to us, but most things eventually do return. This is why when people change behavior they seem to still reap the rewards of coarse behavior because the energetics are just now manifest in their lives after a trip aroun the core of the cosmos.

The presence of other energies along the path length explains another observation. Sometimes people who do reform never catch their due, and sometimes we avoid it after we reform ourselves. This is because the Creator of the universe knows how to intercept those energies with other phenomenae along the path and keep either good or bad things from the return orbit.

I do not know why God chooses to keep from me the highest and righteous desires of my heart. I have some suspicions. Some of my friends find it odd that a person who tries as hard as I do to always be on his best behavior doesn't get what he "deserves". I know my weakness, and to be honest, I am grateful that I did not get what I deserved for the times when I acted less than that of which I know myself to be capable.

My suspicion about the absence of certain blessings in my life is simple. If you live in a higher energy valence level for a protracted amount of time, that will stretch the path length, which means that although anything bad you do takes a long time to return, it also means that good things take time too. I am willing to wait, and He knows that. When I get my due, everyone who knows me will know that I earned it.

Campaign Finance Judgment

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Some people I know seem upset about the Supreme Court's decision this week on the auspices that it will introduce excessive corporate power into the political process. Any time you allow money to influence politics, you run the risk of people making choices for the wrong reason. However, prior to this decision, that was exactly the case.

The type of money available prior to this judgement are directly responsible for the current situation under the current administration. Under McCain-Feingold, the only businesses that could comment on political campaigns were news organizations. Most of them endorse the exact same candidates from the exact same parties in every city in every election. The President will almost certainly speak in the State of the Union of his "tax credit" which as I previously commented has already worn itself out without making much of a difference. Work no longer pays, and it didn't pay us very much.

I know you worry about the supreme court case, but when I see which politicians are unhappy with this decision (like McCain who touted himself during the '08 campaign as pro-free speech), I know it's the right decision. Besides, there was a time when every home was essentially a small business. The women kept the household and kept the books and exchanged the goods and services either provided, produced, or procured by the men for the disposition of the family.

Now that the court has rolled this back, we will find more involvement in politics by corporations. I am pro-laissez-faire, not because I am pro-corporation, but because I am pro-freedom. Corporations may only be as conscientious as those who control them, but governments inevitably devolve into the hands of tyrants or those who desire so to be.

This also means that YOU can do whatever you like now. If you are now successful or ever hope to be, conscientiously conservative capitalism is the only way to empower you to compete with demagogues who continue to write special rules for themselves and a double standard for us.

Endorsement: Monopoly

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Monopoly has really never been one of my favorite games. I lack the cutthroat business saavy necessary to attack and defeat my opponents. That being said, in college I played it a lot because I had this software program on my computer where I could save it for class and play whenever I felt like it. Eventually, both the computer and I had so much money and properties in the right spots so that neither of us would ever win.

Monopoly did help American win a war. It was first brought to my attention today, although the story first broke last September, that Monopoly was used to help Allied POWs escape from the camps in German occupied Europe.

So, in recognition and commemoration of this event, I will go out and purchase a copy of Monopoly, from Waddington's if practicable, in gratitude and recognition of those individuals who helped our servicemen over sixty years ago.

When Are You Going to Run?

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On the topic of why good men don't run, I heard an interesting and illustrative quote on the subject. Many people, as posts here already show, think that what they do suffices. Do we do enough?

Mark Levin asked former Red Sox player Kurt Shilling yesterday:
When are you going to run for office?
I dont' know that I ever will. My family gave 19 years of our life; my wife, my kids gave their lives to Major League Baseball and my career, and I'm not sure. I look at public office, and I look at that job as 24 hours a day, 7 days per week, 365 days a year. There's never an off day when you're serving the people, and I don't know if I can do that to my family again. When it got down to it, I just don't feel like I'm qualified to do something like that.

The Red Sox are actually the only team I have ever seen play live. Baseball does play a fundamental part of American history and culture. Although Kurt poured effort and sweat and tears into baseball and sacrificed, he won't do it for the freedom that allowed him to play that sport. Much as I value baseball's contribution, I do not think that 19 years in baseball excuses you from your duty. Years ago, I swore this oath:

On my honor, I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country, to help other people at all times, to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight. -Boy Scout Oath, Lord Baden Powell

There is no reference to baseball in there per se, but it does mention God and country. Those with the capability have the responsibility.

Since I cannot say this any better, I trust to the Founding Fathers to say it for me:
"The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil constitution, are worth defending at all hazards; and it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors; they purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood. It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men." -- Samuel Adams

Freedom came at a great price. It does not maintain itself. Everything without an investment of work tends to disorder. Entropy and chaos increase unless we resist it. What do you do? At what price will you maintain them? Do you struggle? In the end, all we have is our integrity. It is an inch and it is small, but only in that inch can men truly be free. People may think that what I offer doesn't matter very much, but JRR Tolkien through his character Frodo reminds us that even the smallest person can change the world. In that small inch of my integrity, on my honor, I set out to prove that truth, justice, and freedom are more than words and that they matter.

The Lexington Minutemen did not stand on the green contingent on whether they thought they could win. They showed up anyway. I owe it to their memory, and to the memory of those who died at Tripoli, Trenton, Iwo Jima, Gettysburg, Fallujah, Wonsan, Chihuahua, Omaha Beach, Grenada, New Orleans, Antietem, Pearl Harbor, the Hanoi Hilton, and hundreds of other places known perhaps only to those who were there, to show up and stand fast.

"Stand your ground. Don't fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here." --Captain John Parker, Lexington Militia, 19 April 1775

My First and Only "B"

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I put off taking "Molecular Genetics" in graduate school until what I thought was my last semester in hopes that someone else would teach it. In the end, I ended up with a teacher I would rather not have had who ended up giving me the only "B" I ever scored in school. When I asked him why JR received an "A" and I a "B" for comparable work, he replied that it was because he expected more from me than from JR. This kind of double standard has always bothered me.

It extends into every facet of existence. Most people hold dulpicitous rules for everyone in their lives. They expect you to forgive them but they do not reciprocate, expect you to trust them but don't reciprocate, expect charity from you but do not return it. When you don't live up to expectations, they either use it as an excuse for their own weaknesses or criticize you for it. It's a no-win scenario with these kinds of people.

People worry that I hold them to my standard. Since I have lived it all of my life, I know how taxing it can be. I know enough about human nature to know that unless other people choose it, they cannot possibly do what I do. However, if you tell me your standard, if you promise that you will do something, I will hold you to your word.

Some of those who have scapegoated me on this topic claim I do not see the good in things. A friend of mine told me the other day that I have the ability to see the good of which people are capable and expect them to live up to it. I know you can be much better than you are, but my rubric for myself is valid for me because I chose it. Share your rubric for yourself with me, and I will hold you to it, but I ask no man to follow me. There are better examples.

Most People Don't Look Up

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Yesterday, I took a group of people and we went for a hike at White Rock Canyon AZ. When we reached a critical bottleneck near the destination we sought, we discovered that a ladder, crucial to our ascent at that spot, was absent. Attempts to climb up the rope on a slippery surface with water falling down failed. We headed back the way we came in search of an alternative route.

On the way in, I had noticed that it was odd how there were pieces of biohazard bags tied to bushes just above the rim of the crevice. I looked up as we came to that place again and saw two people headed up the escarpment. We followed them. Other people followed us.

The ascent was difficult. The markers were spread far apart. The ground was treacherous, but we eventually crested the hill safely with a dozen other people in tow some distance behind and descended to the rear of our destination. Tyler commented that if not for the fact that I looked up, we might not have found this alternative route at all, especially not that quickly.

Last night I watched The Return of the King. In a scene near the end, Frodo looks around and misses the giant spider because it's above him. Too often, we look around us but despite being creatures of a 3D existance, we ignore that third dimension and therefore miss out on opportunities.

When times are tough, people look around for somewhere else to go, something to use. Most people don't look up. They don't look to something higher than themselves, something bigger than themselves. Some turn to government, but government, because it is made of men, is on the same plane as we.

When in doubt, we must look upward. When we are lost, we must go up higher. Most people do not look up, and so they miss whatever is higher than they are and never reach the heights to which they could climb and also miss their goals.

To those who left the markers. Thank you. Those who came behind me have you to thank that I saw your more excellent way.

It's a Choice

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On my way to Pennsylvania, I finished a book about Ronald Reagan's speeches and writings. In part of the book, it details the exchange between Gorbechov and Reagan at Rekjavik that illustrates the difference between men who do and men to whom things happen.

I don't know what else I could have done. --Gorbechov
You could have said yes. --Reagan

At the end of the conference, Gorbechov wanted people to think he had done all he could. What he really wanted was to have things his way. That's not a win-win scnenario, so Reagan told him "no deal".

It depends on how we choose to see things. We shut our eyes against painful truths and listen to the song of a Syren until we conspire with her to rob ourselves of reason. Most people will try to put responsibility onto you. Reagan put the responsibility back on Gorbechov who made the decision to accept or reject the ovation.

There's a good reason few people are given responsibility. Responsibility is something that must be taken and taken seriously.