Heros and Zeros

According to Dictionary.com, the definition of hero is as follows:

he·ro
[heer-oh]
–noun, plural -roes; for 5 also -ros.
1. a [person] of distinguished courage or ability, admired for his brave deeds and noble qualities.
2. a person who, in the opinion of others, has heroic qualities or has performed a heroic act and is regarded as a model or ideal: He was a local hero when he saved the drowning child.

I don't think that includes surviving being shot in the head from just standing in a parking lot talking to voters. Running into burning 110 story towers to rescue strangers, knowing you may not come out alive is heroism. Saving your comrades lives at the cost of your own on the battlefield is heroism. Being a victim of random violence is not.

Yet, on several newscasts this morning I heard Rep. Giffords (D-Az) called a hero for surviving being shot in the head at close range and, after 7 grueling months of rehabilitation, which continues, being able to walk onto the floor of the House of Representatives to make a vote. Surviving and getting better is not heroism, it is choosing the best option and being able to accomplish it. An inspiration? Yes. Achievements for her and her friends, colleagues and family to be proud of? Yes. Joining Vice President Biden in the "cracked-head club"? Yes. A hero? No.

I have nothing against Rep. Giffords and wish her well in her recovery. However, we should not cheapen the term hero. There are many brave men and women who have earned that title for acts that they did and not had done to them.

On the other side there are some real zeros who want to do nothing but destroy this country for I don't know what reasons (I would speculate but that would probably run into libel or something). Now that they have saved us from paying our already spent debt, tea baggers are looking to tackle the oppressive 18.4 cents a gallon gasoline tax, which is miniscule by European standards, perhaps so they can create jobs building toll booths at the end of all our driveways. Apparently spending our tax dollars on nation building by rebuilding damaged infrastructure, such as roads, is only for other countries. I really have to ask why these tea baggers hate Americans and the American economy?

These are the United States, not the 50 individual states. We are one nation, not 50. States are not islands among themselves, they trade with each other and conduct commerce with each other. What good is it for the nation having great roads in NY if you can't get to the ports in NJ? What good is having great roads and a port in NJ if the goods can't get out of the region due to poor roads and rail connections to other parts of the nation? We need good roads to transport goods internally otherwise the economy's decline will continue.

Yet if these economic terrorists have their way, our infrastructure will continue to crumble. Education spending has already been slashed, making our children less competitive on the world market. Now with road spending potentially slashed they will be less mobile and less able to move around the country for work. They say they want less taxes so jobs are created. Yet they are so concerned with the corporate rate and helping large businesses by refusing to raise taxes on the 1% that own the vast majority of American wealth that do not create jobs that they are ignoring helping small businesses, mainly owned by the disappearing middle class, that do generate jobs. How is all of this good for America?

Even President Reagan, who wanted to lower taxes and turn back most of the Federal-aid highway program, except the Interstate System, and all transit programs to the States, raised the gas tax in 1982 to help support America's transportation system. America's. Not New York's. Not Illinois's. Not Florida's. Not Montana's. America's. Yet some reckless ideologues want to remove funding for the nation's transportation system and put the economy under the gun once again with their no taxes demands that could essentially force a decline in the nation's transportation system.

Taxes are at their lowest for the wealthy (and a contractor or doctor making $1M a year is not wealthy for the purpose of this argument, those people are barely cracking the upper-class -- I'm talking top 1% of America wealthy) since Hoover was President (now there is a ringing endorsement for job creation). Under President Bush, only 3 million jobs were created in 8 years by mortgaging the present (our past) for the future (our present) with tax cuts that mainly benefited the top 1% of this nation, the worst level of job creation since 1939 when the Labor Department started keeping payroll records. President Obama has seen those jobs wiped out and more as the country continues to recover from our hangover. Taxes? Still low but no jobs. Under President Clinton, who raised taxes on the rich but lowered them on the middle class, 23 million jobs were created (granted he was helped by the internet transforming how we lived and conducted business), expanding the payroll by over 21% -- more than any other President since 1939. But the tyranny of an uniformed minority would have you believe the only way out of the mess created by the Bush tax cuts to the top 1% is to continue those cuts at the expense of tax cuts for the middle class or more stimulus packages.

We have let the roughly 20 percent of the elected officials in Washington who are running the show, take over the country and hold us hostage to their demands which the other 80% attempts to negotiate. However, the rest of DC forgets the cardinal rule when dealing with those who scorn compromise anyway: never negotiate with economic terrorists. It only encourages them.

Debt mess

Recent polls show President Obama's approval ratings are taking a beating over the debt mess. I'm more upset with Congress, especially the tea baggers. Their idea of negotiating is putting a gun to the economy's head and tell us they'll shoot if they don't get their way. I don't think it's a coincidence that the recovery, which was barely starting, has stopped completely since those lying (notice how they have managed to put the mess from the time they ran both the executive and legislative branches onto the President's back) economic terrorists took power.

The Republicans do not represent the majority of Americans, and the Tea Party freshmen represent an even smaller faction. The Tea Partiers don't control the Senate. They don't control the executive branch. But they are willing to abuse their control of the House of Representatives to try to force the American people to accept cuts in Social Security and Medicare that the American people have soundly rejected. Americans know the current system is unsustainable, but it can't be fixed on spending cuts alone.

I'm a 43 year old, upper middle class white male. I am generally fiscally conservative. I should be smack in the GOP's demographic. Yet every year I feel they are moving further from me and my beliefs. I listen to them and all I think is how hard they want to make it for the middle class to survive as a middle class.

To paraphrase Ronald Regan, I didn't leave the GOP, they left me. They have managed to convince enough voters to blame President Obama for this mess that the Republicans and Wall Street have created. They have managed to convince Americans that taxing the rich is unfair when almost have the country doesn't pay federal income taxes, ignoring that the rich (however you want to define them) got most of the economic gains the last few decades while the majority of those who don't pay federal income taxes barely make any money to be taxed. However, I'm not easily fooled and know who to hold accountable (not that the Democats get off in my book, the debt was a bipartisian mess). I'm not going to forget all this hate from the GOP, from the birthers, the race baiters and the muslim haters all trying to destroy the President because of who he is and not what he has done, to those who want to turn the country into an uneducated third world country with little infrastructure. Come the next election it will be time to save the country from the evil that has taken over Washington.

Money for nothing and tax cuts ain't happening

NJ's Governor has finally realized the state is broke and wants to slash the state's budget by a few billion. Yay. He wants to do this, in part, by freezing the salaries of state workers or even ... gasp .... laying them off. Do the state workers getting their salaries frozen or, possibly being laid off, include political appointees who don't really provide anything not already being done by the people actually doing the work? Cause that I approve. If he's going to noose a few guys at the motor vehicle office, meaning I spend a day instead of just an hour or so conducting my business, then I might have a problem.

Personally, I'd like to see the Governor attack the bureaucracy. If you don't personally serve the public, or can someway prove you directly supervise or work with those who do, you should expect to be forced to justify your position. Can't do it, expect to look for a new job or take additional responsibilities. As to salary freezes and benefit reductions: my company will still have raises, but the percentage will be dropped to about 2%. Benefits aren't being reduced per se, but we'll have to pay more.

By the way, if we ever get the finances in order, we really need to invest in automating our back offices. How much head count is needed to answer questions or provide directions to the public that could easily be provided automatically via the internet? For example, I needed to call an office for some information on how to do something and, more importantly, fill out some forms. Why did I call? Because the information wasn't available on the internet. Instead, I spoke to a real live person, which was nice in this day of automated service, who gave me the information I needed. When I hung up, I realized that the information could have been provided on the internet. That made me wonder: how much of our human resources expenses could be reduced by simply investing in a better computer system?

Of course, financial problems aren't limited to NJ. There is a chance that interest on the national debt will eat up most of the federal budget by 2010; not some time in the future -- this year. This is what happens when you pay the minimum on your credit card balance. Let's face it, the economic "boom" of the 00s was from maxing out the country's credit cards. Worse, we don't really have anything concrete to show for it. I could understand it if we had plowed the money back into our nation's infrastructure, as an investment into our economy that would pay for itself in the coming decades, but that would've been duller than the fun we had.