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Notes 2007 Archives
Weekly Notes:
April 2, 2007:
Rat Poison, Perhaps:
By now, the whole country believes American pets were
killed with rat poison. It was an ingredient found in wheat glutton imported
from China. But,
wait a minute. Now, some of the investigators are saying there is melamine in
the glutton. The fact is, they still don’t know for sure but they are
sure it’s the stuff from China
that is doing the damage. I’ll bet Menu Foods saved a bit of money on
that deal. Too bad about the inevitable lawsuits. Win some, lose some!
The big shots at Menu Foods very piously proclaimed they
would pay the vet bills of their victims. Mrs. Gaffer says that is like a
restaurant agreeing to pay the undertaker if they poisoned someone. It
won’t wash. It should not wash. They are liable.
Just to be safe, I am going back to the system used by my
mother and most other people who had pets in the bad old day. Our dog ate the
same things we ate. He ate leftovers. He thrived on it and lived a long happy
life. Bread crusts, cold mashed potatoes, corn, pan scrapings, etceteras,
that’s what he got. He gobbled it up and never got fat or sick.
Budget Problems:
Some Republicrumbs in Michigan
are advocating cutting K-12 school support by 34 bucks per student. For the Flint,
MI. school district that will mean a $680,000.00 cut in state financial
support. For sure, they are whining about that and vowing to fight against
it. How many vice principles will that much money pay? Another school
district that is singing the blues is in Fenton Michigan.
I made an attempt to discover how many deadwood big shots are on the payrolls
of these school districts. They used to post that information proudly on
their websites. Not anymore! It has disappeared. I wonder why.
As to Michigan’s
deficit problem, the legislators are proposing all kinds of new revenue
schemes to make up the shortfall. When you look them over, every one of them
will end up being a new hidden tax on the working middle class. One example
is a tax on utilities like electricity. If the utilities are overtaxed, one
way or another, they will find a way to pass that cost on to the consumers.
If those bums in Lansing, who
squandered the money, would just cut their pay to what they are really worth,
we would have a surplus. They should tax themselves to make up the shortage.
Riders:
If I could do one thing in Washington,
I would outlaw riders on spending bills. The Dumbocrats pushed through a bill
to get our kids out of Iraq,
but it is overloaded with pork riders. What a bunch of slimy scumbags those
people are. They are a disgrace to the human race. They are using our kids
for political tricks and games. King George should veto it. If every politician
there died and a herd of swine got lose in the Capital we would be better
off. Evil, purely evil!
Persian Gulf:
Iran
kidnapped 15 British naval people in the gulf. Tony is blustering and
threatening, but he does not have the wherewithal to do anything about it. America
has put two aircraft carriers into the gulf, but we too lack the wherewithal.
We have no ground troops to carry out any threat King George might make. He
squandered all of our resources in Iraq.
Duh!
After 9-11 our president could have asked for a 2 million
man army. He would have got it, but he did not ask. He thought the Taliban
would just cave in and it would all be over. It was not. Then he thought Iraq
would just cave in and that would be over. Wrong again! The Taliban is back
stronger than ever and Iraq
is hip deep in blood, too much of it from our kids. Instead of an army of 2
million, we have a few thousand troops, all of who are exhausted.
Rewarding Failure:
Ford has carried the concept to a new extreme. A few days
back we heard they were giving bonuses to all their hourly workers. The
bonuses ranged from 300 to 800 bucks. This is an outfit that lost almost 13
billion bucks last year. Huh? Sure, and that’s not the worst of it.
They also gave huge bonuses to their managers, up to 15 thousand bucks. The
big bucks did not go to thee workers. They went to the people who failed big
time, the managers. What a management brainstorm. It must be the idea of that
new bigshot Ford brought in from the airframe industry.
I wonder if William Clay Ford can read. If he can, someone
should give him a copy of B. F. Skinners book, “About Behaviorism.” Skinner makes it very clear that rewarding
failure is counterproductive. In the jargon of behaviorism, when you make the
contingencies of reinforcement for failure positive, you are likely to cause
more failure. If you don’t believe it, check your local welfare roles.
Social
Security:
They are
building a new office in Flint,
Michigan using a non-union contractor. The local
union folks are picketing. Channel 12, ABC news said the contractor doing the
work did not returned their calls. No kidding? If I knew someone was about to
tar and feather me, I would not talk to them either. These media and union
people still do not get it. The days of the well-paid ditch digger are over.
Normality is returning. Good jobs go to people with good skills. People with
no skills will be lucky to get any job at all.
Passports:
Our government,
in its infinite wisdom, now requires people to have passports to go to Canada. The problem is, they have made it
nearly impossible for people to get passports in a reasonable timeframe. It
takes 12 weeks to get through the red tape. And the dance of idiots
continues.
A Good Thing:
I have been very critical of the behavior of our
president. I make no apology for that, but it is nice to notice when he does
something good. This week the surviving Tuskegee Airmen were in the capital
to receive the medals they should have received in the forties. Speaking and
acting as the president rather than as George Bush, the president gave a
proper salute to those men. He also gave an apology, which was profound and
elegant for its simplicity. Kudos to George.
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