WIC to the Rescue!

I just finished buying groceries at the Wal-Mart. I had made a menu, and then made a list of what I needed. I walked the store and bought what was on my list, plus a few extras like a bag of flour and a couple cans of chicken noodle soup.

I stood in the check-out line behind a woman who was buying groceries with WIC checks. WIC stands for Women Infants Children and is a food program that provides nourishment for women infants and children that are at nutritional risk (i.e. poor). WIC is run by a government beauracracy known as the United States Department of Agriculture. Before I go any further what about the men? Do men not need to eat? But I digress....WIC transactions take forever so I scoped out her cart. Beer, soda, cell phone accessories, DVDs, etc. WIC didn't pay for that stuff, so what did? The stack of 100s and 20s she pulled from her wallet payed for that. So I go to Wal-Mart, buy exactly what I need, with my own money, only to stand in line behind someone who is using MY money (my tax money funds the USDA, and therefore WIC, and therefore her WIC checks) to pay for what SHE needs (milk, cereal) so that she can use HER money (100s & 20s) to pay for what SHE wants (DVDs, beer, soda). Totally freaking infuriating.

I figure this means 1 of 2 things:
1) I'm a cold heartless bastard who wants all women infants and children to die of starvation, or;

2) I feel that if you have money to pay for non-necessities (beer, soda, cell phone accessories to go with your cell phone and cell phone contract) that you have enough frigging money to buy your own damn milk and cereal. Turn off the cell phone. Stop drinking beer. Stop watching satellite TV while you drink your beer. And make feeding your OWN family with your OWN money a priority!

Man Up!

I like football. My wife would probably tell you that I love it - but I don't listen to sports talk, I can't tell you what local high school star is going to which college, and I can't even tell you who the local NFL team drafted last, whenever the draft was.

More specifically I like the University of Tennessee Volunteers. Why? Because my momma is from Tennessee and she bleeds orange. And since she's my momma I inherited it from her. It's that simple - I didn't pay the school for a degree, thus ensuring my everlasting love and allegiance to the school - but I dig the orange and white, I dig the checkerboard end-zone, the power T, the circle drill, the band playing Rocky Top, Smokie, the sound of 107,000 people in the stadium, etc., etc. When does football season start and when do tickets for the Tennessee - Oregon game go on sell!?

OK, so maybe "like" isn't a strong enough word. Maybe I do love football, just not as much as some guys.

But my Vols have kind of stunk it up the last few years. The last 2 years they've won 12 games and lost 13, and they didn't even go to a bowl game after the 2008 season. This past year they were humiliated by Virginia Tech in the Peach Bowl. And they're on their third coach in 3 years. The coach this past year left after only 1 year! 1 year! But I digress.....

What this is really about is the coach, or coaches. You see, after the 2008 season the university pushed out their long-time coach Phil Fulmer after a 5-7 season in which they lost to Wyoming(!) and didn't go to a bowl game. So they hired a young guy named Lane Kiffin as coach. Mr. Kiffin did OK, and led the team to a 7-6 season, still not up to UT standards but a step in the right direction. Lane Kiffin brought along his dad, Monte Kiffin, who'd been a top coach in the NFL.

Lane Kiffin took the team to a bowl game, and a winning season. And he did this with essentially the same team that Phil Fulmer had the year before. He used the same QB, the same offensive line, and the same running backs. He used the same resources as were available to the previous coach.

Ditto that for Nick Saban at Alabama. He got to the University of Alabama prior to the 2007 season. In 2006 their record was 6-7, in 2007 under Saban they finished 7-6 and won their bowl game. In 2008 they went 12-2, last year (2009) they finished 14-0 and won the national title.

Much the same for Urban Meier at Florida. He arrived in 2005. The year prior to his arrival Florida was 7-5. His first year (2005) they were 9-3, and the following year (2006) they were 13-1 and won the national title.

And now the Vols have a new coach. Derek Dooley is his name. I can only hope that his results are similar to the results of the guys at Florida and Alabama. Only time will tell though. And really, I liked Lane Kiffin and his dad and I hated to see them go (to Southern Cal of all places) because to me it looked like they were on the right path.

But what does this have to do with anything important? I'll tell you - a common mantra from these guys was "we're going to get the job done and turn this program back into a winning program." You never ONCE heard any of these coaches come out and say any of the following:
"the running back the previous coach recruited is too slow."
"the previous coach let the weight room facilities languish."
"we can't throw the ball because the previous coach didn't develop the quarterback to my liking."
You didn't hear anything like this because these coaches came in to town to get things done, not make excuses. They arrived, took stock of the situation, accepted that it was their responsibility to make things right, and then took to making things right.

Yet we have as a leader of our country a man who defers all responsibility to the previous coach, or previous President as it were. President Obama has laid the following at the feet of his predecessor:
the recession - George W. Bush's fault;
financial institution misdeeds - George W. Bush's fault;
global warming - George W. Bush's fault;
Muslim hatred of America - George W. Bush's fault;
the health care "crisis" - George W. Bush's fault;
the Gulf of Mexico oil spill - George W. Bush's fault;
illegal immigration - George W. Bush's fault;

Here's a tip for President Obama - MAN UP! You're the biggest boy with the biggest toys in the sandbox. Stop blaming someone who has not been in the sandbox for a year and a half for the mess the sandbox is in. If it's a mess, clean it up! It's your job now. And it's the job that you pursued.

Football is a silly game. Yet plenty of coaches have taken a team from loser to winner in one year by manning up, taking responsibility for a situation, and turning it around. Blaming a previous coach never works. But perhaps these coaches who wear funny visors, throw temper tantrums on the sidelines, and slap their players (who wear tights no less!) on the ass are more man than you.

Government to the Rescue!!!

I'm confused about the current health care reform debate, and what I'm confused about is why is there a debate at all. The last couple of weeks our President, and other pro-health care reform folk, have been on a tear against the health insurance companies. Yet...

• Has there ever been a military program that came in on budget? Take a look at the skyrocketing cost of our latest generation fighter jets.
  
• The US Treasury department is run by a man who didn't pay his taxes, until he was nominated to the post.
  
• The US Postal Service operates as a protected monopoly yet operates at a loss; UPS and FedEx turn a profit.
• Amtrak receives $1,000,000,000+ annual subsidy from you and me the taxpayers, yet operates at a loss.
• Social Security is expected be broke by the year 2037, that's our federal government managing our retirement funds. I'll be 64 then! Lucky me!
• Medicare is projected to be broke by the year 2017.
  

It seems to me that if what you want is failure - put the federal government either in charge of it, or squarely in middle of it. My point is that we can not expect or trust our federal government to make wise decisions regarding our health - they have demonstrated that they our incapable of handling our money in issues related to our retirement, our transportation, our mail delivery, our military programs, and everything else for that matter. Yet they, and many Americans, expect an improvement in our health care system as a result of expanded government involvement, or outright takeover.

Past behavior is the key predictor for future behavior. Past behavior by our federal government predicts less service, less availability and less quality of health care - for everyone. Yet it will invariably cost more. More money for less output - the government way!!! Government saves the day again!!!

The U.S. Census & My Fair Share

Today I received a letter from the U.S. Census Bureau. I opened it, expecting to find my census form. I was excited to get it because I wanted to see if they asked me important things, you know, like how many toilets I have. So anyway, it's actually a letter from the census people letting me know that my census form would arrive in the mail next week. The front of the envelope says "POSTAGE PAID". So these clowns wrote me a letter & paid postage to tell me that I would get another letter in the mail next week. Well, how else would I get my census form? FedEx? UPS? Hand delivery? Pigeon? And this cost how much? I'll do the math, as best as I can anyway.

The Census Bureau projects there are 115,000,000 households in the U.S. After doing a little research it looks like postage for a one ounce bulk mail for a non-profit would be between 11 and 17 cents, so I'll split the difference and go with 14 cents postage per letter. Figure probably 4 cents for the custom printed window envelope and another 4 cents for the letter itself. 22 cents x 115,000,000 households = $25,300,000.00 to send this letter out to every household in the U.S. $25 million is a lot of money to me, especially since this letter accomplishes NOTHING!!!! I wonder how many gazillions were paid to consultants and lawyers and lobbyists to write this 2 paragraph work of literary brilliance.

But I digress, what really pissed me off was this line:
"...the 2010 Census will be used to help each community get its fair share of government funds..."
The term "fair share" makes me want to puke all by itself, and these clowns managed to work it into this letter, not once, but twice in one paragraph! Good for them! But, again I digress, Article 1 Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution states that the census must be conducted to determine the number of Representatives and for the apportionment of direct taxes. So, the census is used to

1) determine the number of Representatives that each state has in the House of Representatives - the more people in a state the more Representatives in the House of Representatives - makes sense to me! and

2) The other part about apportionment of direct taxes seems to deal with the levying of taxes, not the redistribution of them.

But this letter references neither of these two items, it states that the Census will be used to determine who gets government funds, which brings me to my next spot of bother and that is the term "government funds". Hello! But where doth our government get these wonderful "government funds"? That's right - from me and you (assuming you pay taxes). There are no "government funds" that aren't created through someone's effort in the private sector. So don't give me this happy feely line about getting my "fair share" of "government funds", tell it like it is, which would be something like this:

"The census will be used to determine how much of other people's income will be redistributed to you."

Which sounds vaguely familiar to the "I just want to spread the wealth around a little bit" line that Barack gave Joe the Plumber.

And in case you haven't noticed our Federal Government is BROKE!!! There's nothing left to distribute, except IOU's.

First Post

This is my first post. Trying to figure out how this works.