A Potential Crisis Averted

There is nothing more comfortable that the interior of my car. It’s easy to keep clean because it’s a smaller space that doesn’t take a lot to clean and I’m not in it a lot and the only thing that I do in it is sit. Over the last couple years I have been able to keep it relatively clean but then I made a potentially horrible mistake. Typically I think ahead when transporting anything that could possibly spill anywhere. And then, on a whim I decided to purchase a growler from a local brewery that makes delicious beer.

Once upon a time I brought a growler from the other side of the country home in my luggage with no problems. That experience no doubt left me unjustly overconfident. I had been thinking of bringing home a growler recently and really should have brought the container that I got from that brewery in Baltimore. It has a ceramic top with a rubber stopper that clamps at the top forming a spill proof seal. But no, I forgot it and received a growler from the brewery with a typical screw top.

I should have known when the server started to wrap the top with roughly a quarter roll of electrical tape. I put it down in the seat of my car and just before I pulled out of the parking lot noticed out of the top of the growler a small trickle of beer starting to exit. Just before that sweet sweet stout could foul the perforations of my Japanese engineered leather passenger seat I grabbed the apparently porous container and placed it on top of my rubber floor mat in the passenger foot well. As the container jostled back and forth the electrical tape failed and what appeared to be a small amount of beer started to drip out. I gingerly took corners and made it the short distance home without making any adjustments.

I figured that the rubber floor mat would catch everything but should have known better as I had to trim it to fit the generic mat into my car. At three points brown puddles of distilled grain had started to seep into my previously virgin carpet. Instead of crying I rushed inside and obtained a roll of paper towels, carpet cleaner and a shop vac. Half an hour of furious clean up later everything looked okay, but it was dark so I couldn’t be sure. A few days later and my car doesn’t smell like beer and the carpet looks alright. I was lucky this time. There’s just nothing worse than something that makes one’s car a little less pristine. I wish I could drape every surface of it with plastic…

And Locksley exits…

While from those whom follow sports too much the aura of delight seems apparent, there is no real gratification in someone losing their job. All things considered everyone involved would have been better served had Mike Locksley become an incredible success as head coach of the UNM Lobos football team. Unfortunately, Locksley was not successful as coach of the team evidenced by a 2-26 record, the worst winning percentage of any Lobo football coach spanning the last 100 years. With no signs of improvement in his third year, starting 0-4, following a loss to lower division foe Sam Houston state Locksley was relieved of his head coaching duties. Coaching division 1 college football is no easy chore and coaches are compensated appropriately. While the risk of losing one’s job is always there, coaches often sign long-term contracts requiring compensation in case of early termination and as such Locksley will be paid handsomely for the next two years. The prospect of a fresh start always lends itself to optimism in sporting endeavors, good luck to Mike Locksley in his future and to the Lobos with regard to improving the program.

Should a governor be pro-illegal activity?

The Christian Science Monitor puts forward a brain dead question in a recent headline:

Susana Martinez: Can a Latina governor be anti-illegal immigration?

It continues:

The announcement last week by New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez (R) that her paternal grandparents came to the US illegally brought national attention to a small but growing trend in American politics: the rise of the anti-illegal immigration Latino.

I just don’t get it. I happen to be what is defined as ‘Latino’ for check box purposes. I don’t think I have any illegal immigrants in my family; they happened to be here when the US took over so they were just assumed to change citizenship. Anyway, regardless, it boggles the mind whenever some nitwit decides to determine what an entire subset of people must believe as a result of their skin color and ancestral heritage. And what’s with all the consternation over the Governor of a state opposing illegal activity? Perhaps it’s popular in some circles to oppose the law, but it is the law and at the top of national identity is sovereignty and the ability to determine immigration policies.

The Vice President and places venture capital won’t go

In an interview in the current issue of Car and Driver magazine, Vice President Biden stated “One role of government is to go where venture capital won't”. As a long time senator (January 1973 to January 2009) Vice President Biden certainly had lots of time to shovel government largess into so-called “investments”. If one views government in a manner similar to the Vice President, sending money where venture capital won’t seems to make sense. But the government doesn’t exist to “invest” in the traditional sense. Proper government shouldn’t assume the role of investor because of the powers of the public fisc and of regulatory legislation. Because the government controls the purse strings of the nation’s finances it commands vast sums and can spend more than a traditional investor. Because of its regulatory powers the government can create a business environment superficially favorable to its “investments” and as a consequence, negative to competitors of those “investments”. This happening is often referred to as the ability of government to pick winners and losers. Selecting whom gets financed on the backs of taxpayers and determining the rules of business is a clear conflict and would be denounced and banned if any private citizen or entity had the same power.

Most worrying, many venture capitalists lose vast sums on many investments, infrequently finding themselves rewarded by capital gains. If venture capital won’t invest in a project it seems logical to conclude that it is not a sound investment. The government “invests” by providing incredibly low interest loans. If the “investment” is not successful the taxpayers are responsible for funds that are never paid back. And if there is a payback (a big if) it is at low interest, the best case being paid back in full with minimal gain. Many government “investments” require constant government favors if they survive, negating any positives. The underlying problem is that the government is not a sober disinterested party. It is made up of people with interests and agendas. They can spend vast sums of money that is not their own based on those interests. This responsibility should be sacrosanct, and “investing” in pet projects unpalatable to the market (as in there is no demand, see Solyndra) is contemptible at best. The productivity of the citizens of this country is so great that the government has more money, taken from that productivity, than sense. This is the crux of the problem, no Vice President Biden; the government should not be “investing” on things nobody wants with money that isn’t theirs.

Of Tea Party Myths

Certainly there exist books and professionals able to properly characterize the need of some to demonize a loosely defined entity as responsible for the ills of society that while undesirable are otherwise impossible to fully understand. The latest hate object serving as a universal dart board for frustrations arising from the human condition is the Tea Party, a loosely constructed political movement borne of dissatisfaction with the federal government’s penchant for over-spending. There are several different groups that label themselves as the ‘official’ Tea Party; however, there is no single lead group only a unifying theme of limited government.

By virtue of its composition, the Tea Party has proven itself to be a useful antagonist for proponents of big government, a faceless goblin to blame for the lack of political will available to spend even more on programs that don’t work. Self identified ‘progressive’ politicians to include the President regularly construct infeasible scenarios in which the Tea Party, constructed of troglodytes desire some comical solution desirous of earthly destruction while the politician favors enlightened progress which is always more of the same.

And it works. There are many who endorse the view that the Tea Party, which has no formal responsibilities and somewhat aligned with a small number of legislators and has only existed for several years in current form is responsible for all human suffering. And it’s not only the easily led that hold this view. A curious development and one that supports the idea that real change is impossible until the juvenile view that human nature is something other than it is and that a utopian existence free of all suffering is attainable is dismissed. Those who choose to blame faceless entities like the Tea Party in this manner display a willful ignorance of reality, preferring myth to reality and will force much more detrimental effects in the future.

Another Stimulus!

Pass this bill! If you love me you’ll pass this bill! Such is the drivel that our campaigner in chief has been reduced himself to as of late. Powered by tax dollars and unhindered by travel restrictions by virtue of access to two private 747s the president has been traveling the country campaigning for his re-election by making promises of cold hard cash to favored constituencies.

It started with the president demanding an audience with congress, an address to a joint session to begin his campaign supposedly coincidently scheduled with a republican presidential candidate debate. Never mind that it is the congress that is to invite the president to deliver a speech to a joint session. In the speech the president ordered the assembled congress to pass ‘his’ bill titled the “American Jobs Act”. Never mind that the congress is a separate and equal (by level of responsibility) branch of the federal government. Never mind that there was no written bill at the time of the speech, the president promising benefits tomorrow while putting off delivery of said bill to a week later. Never mind that the president cannot submit a bill into either house of congress without a sponsoring member.

Never mind the absurdity of a spending bill that is mostly comprised of future targeted tax increases transferred immediately to public employees and works called a ‘jobs bill’ as if taking money out of the private sector well into the future to redistribute in the short term will add any jobs where they are actually needed. Does the president even understand that the funds necessary to pay for public jobs and works come from taxes collected from the work of private workers and business? Private businesses that are created under the auspices of eventually creating wealth for those who take the risk to try. Apparently the president believes that the government is responsible for creating businesses and that he can order hiring just because and also order around congress.

Never mind is the response this presidency deserves. The constant lecturing and insistence on boundless and irresponsible spending is exhausting. How the president thinks that a majority of the public will support another spending initiative half as large as one that failed in every conceivable metric put forth by its designers is puzzling. The less that congress does over the next year the better until this intolerable community organizer can be ushered into retirement. Viva obstructionism!