Welfare

            As Peter Rogers indicated on 8/29, when the city subsidizes a municipal golf course, it is providing welfare for the members of that golf course.  If you asked among them, each one would probably proclaim opposition to government welfare.  But there it is.  When you think about it, the city is providing welfare to citizens by maintaining public parks and pools too.  We non-golfers who like the occasional park picnic don’t have a problem with that.  So, we’ve established that government welfare is acceptable, if often unacknowledged.

            The problem is that golfers share an image with many sports enthusiasts of being people with a little pocket change to spare.  Is welfare for these people in our present day Ebenezer Scrooge economy OK?  A plethora of politicians, also encumbered of a financially happy reputation, are striving to steal away the food security of thousands by scrooging shut their SNAP purse.  And who hasn’t felt the energy sting, thought of old Scrooge, and tried to use fewer lumps of coal?  Amid all the tribulation, should government provide welfare to golfers?

            Well, we certainly don’t want them putting through our picnics.  So at least welfare contains them, like a Jurassic Park might do.  Seriously though, Rogers identifies that the problem really is in the prognosis—not whether, but how much subsidy is prudent.  Right now it is a LOT of welfare, without much prospect for reduction.  Around here, we think taxpayers should consider this dilemma and express their opinions on the issue.

Power Play, With Wind

            Nebraska needs a power surge in renewable energy expansion—one that turns on the juice.  This spring our state legislators passed a bill, LB104.   It lowers renewable energy development costs through incentives that our utility companies should be scrambling to capitalize.   

            Nebraska doesn’t need to be the apparently bewildered coal slinger state (with our 450 megawatt wind/gen capacity) surrounded and out-winded by Iowa, Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas and South Dakota.  We have the wind resources to do much more.  Time to get motivated.  Bottom line, we need to get back in the wind energy game!

            This isn’t about bragging rights.  You know, all flags and decals and “we’re number 1!”  It’s about keeping rates low, creating jobs, and building an economic base that attracts business investment in our state.  Companies that bring their business and jobs here because we have invested in stable utility rates through renewable energy.  Companies that perceive Nebraska as a place attuned to meeting the needs of the future.  We could attract billions, with a b, of investment dollars.

            Wind farms themselves represent large ecologically sound investments that produce not only power, but construction jobs, technical maintenance jobs, thousands of dollars in lease payments to land owners, and thousands more in tax revenues for school districts and other local government operations.  Plus reduction of greenhouse gasses, air pollutants, health care costs, and conservation of huge amounts of water now used for other types of energy production.    

            Around here, we think it’s time for a high wind-energy power play.

"Our Kind of People"

            We have work to do, but several states are showing the way.  Start with Voter Identification laws.  Everybody instinctively knows the importance of voting, even if they don’t usually vote.  Another of our basic instincts is to thwart cheaters, even if we hurt ourselves in the process.  Our strategy is to combine voting and cheating into what we call “Voter Fraud”.  Even though it is virtually nonexistent, it’s an easy sell because it taps deep emotions.  Voter ID laws disenfranchise a significant number of people.  But they’re not Our Kind of People.

            We also should be busy “adjusting” district boundaries so that Our Kind of People get more wins in their districts.  Gerrymandering is an age-old political practice, and we know how to do it.  It can be done neutrally, but why?  Now that the Supreme Court has lifted up the rug, we’ll just sweep away our opponents.

            Of course we’ll limit the time span that is available for registering and voting.  It seems stupidly transparent, but it’s also an easy sell on the basis of saving taxpayer money.  By ending voter registration twenty-five or thirty days before election day, we will exclude last minute voters and people who are moving to find jobs, and transients—not OKP.  Then cut back on polling staff & infrastructure, voting hours, and absentee voter access time and justification.

            Around here, we know it’s not always a just world.  But exclusionary OKP trickery deserves the scorn of both the just and the jaded.  

The Polar Eclipse

            Well, I saw my shrink, Brian Teaser, again.  Sometimes the world just crumples you into a ball and flings you toward the bin.  I was fine until I realized, as I waited to enter traffic at the stop sign, that all these other drivers are so dangerous.  Several times, I shifted into reverse to go back home, but was thwarted by all the horn-honking from behind.  Presently, I darted into traffic and raced to the sleeping psych for help.  I call him that because he nods off now and again.

            “Doc,” I said as I hit the couch, “I’m terrified of driving in traffic!”

            “Hang on a minute,” Teaser interrupted, “I’m doing an e-trade.”

            “Other drivers scare me witless,” I continued when he grunted.  “They’re dumb and inconsiderate.  They’re killers!  Plus, when I’m walking at the mall, I get really nervous about pickpockets.  Sometimes I worry so much I get hives.  I think I’m getting a nervous tic.  And I’m starting to like country music.”

            “Dang,” he exclaimed!

            “Doc, I feel dumber than shoe polish at a butt kicking contest!  Do you think I’m angoraphobic?”

            “Are you afraid of sweaters too?”

            “Sweaters?  I don’t know.  Maybe.  What am I going to do?”

            “In the words of my philosopher friend Colin, ‘I’m sorry, you’ve caught me between give-a-damns.’ 

            “What does that mean, Doc?  What do I do?”

            “Once again, Colin to the rescue!  Go outside and look up at the sky.  Contemplate the clouds.  Enjoy the Polar Eclipse.

            “The Polar Eclipse?”

            “It’s when the Polar bears fly south for the winter.”      

The Price of Beans

Nearly 12 million Americans are still out of work. Many for over a year.  Food pantries are starving—they can’t keep up with demand.  In America, almost 17million children cannot consistently get sufficient nutrition to lead a healthy life.  Hunger saps their achievement and development—their future.  When they can get food, healthy food is hard enough to find.  It’s hidden behind the cheeseburgers, sodas, and cream-filled cake treats that we support with advertising tax deductions.  Our industrial food system is failing them.

            And what are congressional politicians talking about?  Jobs?  Prosperity?  Good nutrition in the hood?  Hunger?  Enhhhhh!  You have entered a word or phrase that is no longer in service.  Politicians are talking about interest rates, money supply, the stock market recovery, and how government should let the “free market” go, without meddling to help the sick and hungry.  That’s the same free market that is managed, with government spending on tax relief for the un-hungry, cheap use of federal land assets, and deep financial bows to our planet’s enemies.  You would think all that largess from the public treasury would create some allegiance to America and the citizens who support it.  You would be wrong.  It is fueling another temper tantrum to keep the government from doing anything until it abandons affordable health care.

            What’s all this got to do with the price of beans?  Well, around here, thanks to our “friends” in congress, a whole lot more of us know what it is.