Fees To Thugs

The old story goes like this.  A young couple living in the city of Chicago decide to start a little family business.  Shortly after opening their doors a shady looking character walks in asking for the proprietor.  He then offers the couple “protection” in their business.  The couple look a little confused so the stranger clarifies.  “What I’m offering you, for a fee you see, is protection… from us”.  Now they get the picture.

These are thugs and that’s how they operate.  This tactic has been around for years and has now been  perfected to the point that people seem to accept it as good and normal.  Consider the union shop.  The person who goes to work in this shop has his “fees for protection” taken out of his paycheck every month; and it's tax deductible to boot.  If the poor worker doesn’t like what his union stands for and decides to stop paying his “fees”, then the union, backed by the power of the federal government, has him fired. Thugs you see.

On a larger scale we witnessed this year the attempt by these same sorts of thugs to oust the Governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker.  All the stops were removed it seemed because Walker was actually keeping a campaign promise to stop the fiscal bleeding in his state brought about by promised fees.  The thugs in the press slandered him.  The thugs in the legislature tied the hands of their law-making colleagues by denying a quorum by fleeing the state.  The thug workers filled the capital with rebellion, hatred and spite. In the end however the people of Wisconsin won this little battle.  We will see how that goes yet.

But there seems to be another strand of thuggery on the horizon.  We have all heard the story of Chick-fil-A’s run-in with Chicago’s mayor, the thug Rahm Emanuel.  It seems that the president of Chick-fil-A has announced that his company is not paying the fee for protection...  in so many words.  So, in typical thug fashion, the mayor has informed Chick-fil-A that it will not be receiving protection in Chicago… from Chicago.

The Arizona republic, a thug rag in its own right, ran a story Saturday, the 27th of July, informing the reader of the sort of fees that are expected for this sort of protection.  It's article begins: “Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos waded into a developing corporate culture war over gay marriage Friday with a $2.5 million donation to keep same-sex union legal in Washington… Bezos joins Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates and companies like Starbucks Inc. and Nike Inc. with support to the campaign to uphold Washington’s law.“    Strangely missing in the story, for those who notice such things, is the typical 1-versus-99%-esque drivel we are accustomed to seeing when it concerns the uber-rich like Bezos and Gates, or how the low paid employees at these companies might have received raises instead, or the fact that these are very large corporations which are the nemesis of the modern day thugs--so we are led to believe anyway.  We didn’t hear any of this because they paid the fee… you see.  They are saints.

This all makes sense to us because we are tuned to it.  We are in fact living it out in the spiritual realm.  In this same fashion God offers us protection from himself.  But God is no thug.  For one, we rightly and justly deserve what God is offering us protection from… which is Himself.  Because we are the thugs in this story.  But more than this, he is offering to pay the “fee”, because it is a very expensive fee you see.  Not even Bill Gates could pay this fee.  His worldly wealth is much better squandered on worldliness.  But there again is the beauty of this fee.  Those who are oppressed by the likes of these sorts of thugs can still afford the fee, for it is paid by God Himself, and is free to all who realize their need for it and so ask for it.

An Old Post I Finally Decided To Publish

Like German tanks rolling into Poland it appears that the Government’s invasion of the health insurance industry will continue unabated. But as we, like the Poles losing their homeland, morn the closing of an era of freedom, we ought to realize that this happened as the result of a ramification of problems we refused to see, and not as a result of problems that were just too difficult to overcome. Let me explain one of them here.

One problem in particular, if one were to dig past the rocky crust of entitlement thinking and emotions, is a faulty premise concerning healthcare. Consider the following syllogism:

• Premise 1: No one ought to be allowed to die as a result of his own foolish health insurance decisions.
• Secondary premise: It is not fair that some must pay for the foolishness of others.
• Conclusion: Government must take away all people’s rights when it comes to health insurance. 

This syllogism was undergirded recently by Nancy Pelosi. On a particular day recently she blamed those horrible free-loaders (those who can afford insurance but don’t bother) for the problems with health insurance. Don’t worry about Pelosi’s change of heart though. As a democrat she can easily  forget that she ever said such a thing about her constituents so those “free-loaders” will be morphing back into victims on her lips quicker than you can say greedy, racist Republican. But on this day Pelosi actually swerved a little closer to the truth than usual in her drunken-esque ramblings. Even If only by one premise she did however avoid bashing through the rail that usually keeps her well clear of the road of reality and common-sense.

The premise of which I speak is number 1. Like the Blazing Saddles’ sheriff who gained control of a deteriorating situation by holding his gun to his own head, this premise allows that no matter how irresponsible a person may be, society must step in before that person pays the ultimate price for his stupidity. Never mind for the moment that this directly contradicts our society’s religious source for morality: evolution, the effect is that an entire society is held captive, according to Nancy Pelosi and myself, by those who think buying a Harley more important than providing for one’s own healthcare. So when they are hauled into ER shortly after they found their Harley and helmetless head bouncing down the highway, premise 1 kicks in. Since premise 1 is already accepted law, and as such constitutes de facto free healthcare, Obamacare can’t really be seen as the beginning of socialized medicine but rather only a stage in its implementation.

There have always been other options beyond letting the man die that don’t involve the coercion of those who choose wisdom over foolishness. For one he could be cared for then charged for the service. The resources could be extracted somehow.  The IRS could be consulted on this. They are masters at extracting the fruit of other people’s labor from their greedy little hands. But for the same reasons that we accept premise 1 as a given, we, as a people, will never allow for any options that might make a mom feel bad.

For those who see the 2700 pages of bureaucratic-micro-managing-tentacle law bound up inside Obamacare as an actual effort to solve health insurance issues there’s probably no hope; likewise for those who blindly see it as compassion or others yet who see it as just another means to pick their “rich” neighbor’s pocket. But for many it is a travesty. For just as throwing expensive drugs, as opposed to searching out root issues, at a sick person’s symptoms is expensive in terms of that person’s health and dollar-bills; it’s also expensive in terms of liberty and dollar-bills when higher taxes and less freedom are seen as the only acceptable medicine for maintaining the health of a free republic.

When a people enjoy the luxury, for a time, of abandoning reality; choosing instead to drink deep the wine of make-believe worlds of personal peace, affluence, and resources that magically appear at their benevolent leader’s beckon and call, they become too drunk to think. But reality has a way of catching up. It always does. And given the bar tab, and the drunken stupor that the majority of Americans appear to have drank themselves into, when it catches up this time it’s going to run us all down.

Ozzie And Harriet, Not Real Life?

How many times have I heard the criticism that the show "Ozzie and Harriet", or “Leave It To Beaver” were not real life? In answer to this criticism the networks gave us “Married With Children”. Now there’s a show that should keep the I’m-failing-as-a-parent blues at bay. But what happens when a show actually reflects real life?

 Well apparently the makers of the movie “God Bless America” don’t want to live up to this standard. Judging from the trailer, it appears that this movie allows its makers, and viewers, to fantasize about how they wish they could respond to the trials of human relations.  One of those trials is some misbehavior in a theater.  So the characters respond the way they respond to all the other things that they don't like about their fellow humans.  They shoot them… right there in the theater.

But now, since such has become real life, they are going to remove that part.  Go figure. Don’t worry though. Since no one has gone on a shooting rampage in the park, or at a protest, lately there’s plenty of opportunity elsewhere in the film to vicariously live out the fantasies of simply blowing away those wedon’t like.