If Congress truly believed in the “global warming crisis” they would ban all carbonated beverages. Consider it, every time a bottle of soda pop is opened, carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere. Then look at the grocery carts in the checkout counters, they are loaded with cases of soda pop. The people consuming them are probably releasing much more CO2 into the air than they did driving their cars to the supermarket to buy them. 

Members of Congress, in their seemingly infinite ability to act stupidly, passed a law requiring all television broadcasters to stop using analog signals and switch to digital signals. Most people’s television sets won’t receive such signals. At the time, I swore I would not spend a thousand dollars to watch football games, about the only programs I consider worth watching on television. Then our “leaders” discovered that most television sets would not receive such signals without new antennas and a converter box. As a result, they offered free coupons to help people buy the converter boxes – using taxpayers’ money of course. Now a new glitch appears. A recent article in the Wall Street Journal by Amy Schatz (April 2, 2009) pointed out that many people will be unable to watch television when the bill banning analog because the digital signals do not travel as far as the analog signals. She cites an example of a person living 40 miles from Washington D. C., who is unable to receive television with his new converter box and antenna. Were I running for Congress against an incumbent this coming year in a rural area – more than 40 miles from a major city – I might mention this fiasco to potential voters.

Also instructive concerning the wisdom of our Congress is the requirement to use the new light bulbs, the ones which have worked satisfactorily for the past 70 years being outlawed. The new mercury light bulbs, despite being much more expensive, are supposed to use less electricity and last much longer. Whoops! Reports coming in cite numerous instances of these new wonder bulbs burning out much faster than those old faithfuls. There are other problems also. Because of the mercury, they cannot be put in the regular trash and, if one is dropped and broken in the house, instructions are to evacuate the room immediately, waiting fifteen minutes before re-entering and then use gloves to pick up the pieces. Congratulations Congress!

The federal government under Obama is now running the major banks and the largest two of the Detroit automobile makers. (They claim this isn’t really true, but when I was working for a living I considered anyone capable of firing me or adjusting my salary as being in charge – and that is what people in the federal government are doing.) But, back to the subject, we can now expect great things out of General Motors, Chrysler, and the banks. If you don’t believe that, consider Freddy Mac and Fannie Mae, in their years under federal control they have paid handsome salaries to their leaders, contributed heavily to Congressional supporters, and assisted tens of thousands of Americans attempting to purchase homes into bankruptcy.

Obama, in his tour around the world (while Pelosi and Reid run the nation) has apologized to nation after nation for our arrogance in giving them hundreds of millions of dollars in help when they needed it, bowed to King Saud of Saudi Arabia and described Islam as a nation of peace. Some conservatives have thoughtlessly criticized him for this. After all, if Islam wasn’t a nation of peace, Islamic terrorists would be killing innocent people around the world, in the Philippines, Pakistan, Iraq, Somalia, Holland and, perhaps, even one or two in the United States instead of sending charitable teams to help all people, not simply themselves. Why shouldn’t he bow to King Saud, isn’t the King the leading Muslim in the world? All Muslims bow to him. 

Actually, I like Obama apologizing to the world for all we have done to them. I only hope he follows through by changing this. We won’t need those tax increases when he stops interfering with other nation’s ways by giving them billions of dollars: in cash, material, and aid. He could start by stopping the hundreds of millions we give to the United Nations every year.

Beggars Can Be Choosers

By

William D. Dannenmaier

During my employed years and extending for a few years past retirement, I did volunteer work. The majority of this was as a licensed psychologist, but it included work, as a volunteer, with Vocational Rehabilitation and as a representative of Equal Employment. The overwhelming majority of these people were poor and being supported by the government. Some of my work was successful, and some was not. Initially this was on an occasional basis, a graduate student would know someone in trouble and ask me to work with them, but it became formal in 1965 when I volunteered to spend one half day a week at the Mental Health Clinic (Friday afternoons) in Springfield, Missouri.

Most of my early, volunteer, work was with youth. I had read Dr. Sullivan’s book on working with schizophrenics and was impressed by his argument that to help them he needed to get into their frame of reference, to understand their thinking. I used this in my work. I have played catch, arithmetic flashcards, and hunted four leaf clovers with youth sent to me. One boy was brought to me who was failing in junior high school, but he was pool champion of the province of Alberta. We talked about pool a lot and he explained how he practiced every day after school and played all day on Saturdays, but he didn’t believe he could succeed in academic work. When he analyzed his own pool “practice” as study, he came to understand that the same type of effort would succeed in school. Another youth was failing seventh grade. After a few weeks “playing” arithmetic flash cards, he told me that the world was going to end in September – as taught by his pastor. Instead of arguing that point, I asked if God wouldn’t want him to do his best in preparation for heaven. He agreed, and his grades improved. 

Not all of my work was with children however. A young lesbian was brought to me by her “partner” because she had attempted suicide. When I first met her my desk, where I sat, was in a large office with the door about ten feet away. Afraid of me, she pulled her chair over by the door and her “partner” sat outside the closed door. Over a few weeks, she told me about her background and I learned that she had been taught, from childhood on, to fear men. (She also began sitting by my desk.) Then she confessed that her suicide attempt had come when she discovered that her “partner” was having sex with men – married men. I suggested that that was how her “partner” maintained her distrust of all men. On our last visit, before she left, we were standing together looking out the window at the stars. She told me that she wouldn’t mind having sex with a man like me. I answered that there were lots of men like me, she simply had to put herself in a position to find them. The next time I saw her, by accident, she was sitting at a table in the faculty club surrounded by a half dozen young men. I’m not sure her “partner” approved of me. I hope not.

During my years with the Mental Health clinic, I had some successes, some failures. One man finally confessed to me that he was planning on killing his ex-wife because she wouldn’t let him see his son and he was certain God didn’t like that. (He had been convicted of child and spouse abuse.)  I thought that one over and said, “I don’t think God would like that. If you killed her, we would put you in prison and then, if your son needed you, you wouldn’t be able to help him.” I watched the newspaper carefully that week, worrying. When he came in the next week he said, “Do you remember what I said last week?” (Did I!) He continued, “That night I went up on the roof of my apartment and asked God about what you said, and He replied that you were right.” The next time I saw him was about a year later. I was sitting in a park relaxing and he came up. He was working as a grounds keeper and was happy with his life. 

A failure that I remember well was of a woman, another welfare case, whom I finally told, “If you won’t do anything to help yourself, please don’t come back. There are too many others who need help and are willing to try to change.” I didn’t see her again for about six months, then she made another appointment. I was pleased that she had decided to change. She asked to borrow money to go to St. Louis!

A situation that interested me was in Tennessee. Teaching at the university, Judge Catalano telephoned and told me that she had heard I would do free work, would I help with the Girls’ Home. I became vice-president of the home for girls adjudicated delinquent and responsible for overseeing the activities of the home. A counselor, Sheila, told me that one night when they were talking to the girls about the need to do well in school to get good jobs. The girls replied that they could make more money than the counselors did – and proved it by adding up the value of food stamps and other welfare incomes they could receive in their current lives. 

Retiring, and returning to the hills of Tennessee where people at all levels of the economic scale live in close proximity to each other, I became active in community affairs and learned still more about people. A neighbor, whose income exceeded mine, had a wife who collected disability benefits. When their daughter became pregnant by a young man who wished to marry her, the parents convinced them not to marry – every thing would be free. They were correct: prenatal care, hospitalization, furniture for the child and diapers were all free. In addition, she received child support. In the meantime, the young man changed his mind about marriage and she left, leaving the child behind. The “disabled” grandmother received child support for caring for her own grandbaby.

The girls at the girls’ home were right. Poverty pays.

Now we have interesting examples at the other end of the scale. Our Democratic Congress passed laws requiring banks to loan to people to buy homes that they could not afford, loans without down payments. President Bush’s federal government enforced those laws and penalized banks that did not make the loans. Then, when the banks had economic problems as a result of those Congressional laws enforced by a “Republican” President, Congress voted billions of taxpayer dollars to bail them out. Badly managed financial firms have been “bailed” out and now the Detroit Big Three automobile companies have been bailed out. State governments that have spent unwisely and overpaid workers are applying for more help and the incoming President, Obama, has promised a trillion dollars in help. A consortium of universities have asked for help. None have made any great efforts to control the problems they themselves have created.

The poor receive help, the wealthy receive help – all on their own conditions. Beggars can be choosers. In a way it seems only right that ten or twelve dollars an hour workers in the South and Midwest who voted for the Democratic Congress, Bush and Obama should be taxed to keep the millionaires and automotive workers making thirty dollars an hour happy. 

Yes, President Bush is doing this to the very people who elected him, the workers. I now think of President Bush as President Benedict Arnold Bush.