Stop Pulling the Wagon

It has been my philosophy to never give up trying.

There have been tough times in my life where my faith and the belief that God doesn’t so much want me to be willing to die for him as he wants me to live out his plan for me that has given me the grit to keep on trying, no matter the odds.

Like the frog with his hands around the throat of the stork.  I am feeling like that.

I love this country and feel blessed to have been born here and to have grown up in the years and times that I did.

Lately, I have become discouraged at the path that we, as a nation, are headed down.  I see a time coming all too soon that most everything I believe in will be gone.  Washed away in a Tsunami of national debt and dependency.  A form of institutionalized slavery for the great mass of sheeple.

We are going to need to build a fence around our borders, not to keep enemies out, but to keep productive citizens from escaping.  Looking for freedom and opportunity in another part of the world.

It isn’t that there are not hardworking, sincere and honest leaders and politicians trying their best to make things better.  There are.  The problem is the other 97%.

One of the most admired people in my life is both an attorney and a politician – and that is a sentence I never thought I would be able to write.  He is also a man of faith and, in my opinion, a kind of Don Quixote.  Armed with but a single lance in a forest of windmills.

Leaders like this man are vastly outnumbered.  One of a small percentage of dedicated men and women.  They face an overwhelming army of what I have characterized as clowns, lunatics and criminals, interested only in their own re-election and feeding their own egos.

Too few Don Quixote’s and too many windmills filled with the aristocracy from the dark side.

How do we fix anything with those kind of odds?

Is it time to just give up and start looking for a hole in the fence?   I’m beginning to wonder.

Bob Bandy

Reprinted with only my closing comment. 

I received this via email with a request to share it.

With an apology to Aesop

Once upon a time there was a pleasant meadow in a lovely valley.

A colony of ants came to the meadow and saw that the land was good and with work would provide for a lovely place to live for them and their children.

They worked hard and put away food for the winter and cared for the land.

From a neighboring valley a tribe of locusts came to the land of the ants and decided to stay because the meadow was so pleasant and fertile.

The ants welcomed them in as neighbors and soon they all decided that they should form a government and each ant and locust would get an equal vote in the affairs of the meadow.

Some of the  locusts came to the ants and said they were poor and in need.  Being of kind heart the ants voted to share the fruits of their hard work with the locusts.

Being locusts, they did what locusts are prone to do, that is create lots of little locusts and sit in their burrows eating the food produced by the ants and watching their flat screen televisions paid for by the ants.

In time they discovered, as the little locusts grew up to vote, that they now outnumbered the ants and could vote themselves more and more of what the ants were working so hard to produce.

More and more locusts had baby locusts and invited their relatives and kin in from neighboring meadows.

One by one the ants figured out that they were doing all the work and the locusts were doing all the eating and loafing and watching television.

The ants decided that they did not want to continue to provide for an ever increasing number of locusts who did little to provide for themselves.

The ants packed up and left the now ravaged meadow and moved away to another meadow in another valley.

Winter came to the meadow of the abandoned locusts.  The locusts starved and froze because there was no longer any ants to provide for them what they refused to provide for themselves.

And the shadow of darkness fell over the formerly  pleasant meadow in the formerly lovely valley.

End of story.  If you are an ant you know the moral of the story.  If you are a locust you don’t care if there is a moral; you just want to know where the ants went.

Bob Bandy

Have not posted anything in a while.  Written a number of drafts but not been happy with the content or tone.  Following what is happening in national and world events has gotten me into something of a “funk”.

I have always thought of myself as a positive kind of person.  Tried to see humor, or at least irony,  in most of the foibles of mankind.

But, I can’t see anything cute or funny in what is happening to the country I was born in and loved all my life.  This is not a Democrat or Republican thing.  A pox on both their houses.  They both “brung us here where we is now”. 

From my view there are two catastrophic problems facing the United States and everything else is the fruit of these two things.

One: You can’t have true civilization without civility and we are loosing our ability to be civil with one another.  We are dividing into warring camps with irreconcilable differences.  Not everything can be compromised.

Two: The discipline of simple mathematics.  No matter what title or letters you put before or after you name, you cannot get 20 pounds of potatoes from a 10 pound sack and that is what we are trying to do.  The universe does not care what your political affiliation is or if you don’t like the laws of mathematics.  Ultimately, math is like gravity and spending money you don’t have is like trying to fly without wings.  Deficit spending can only go so high before it all comes tumbling down.

If you are an individual, a corporation, or even a city and you spend “what you don’t got” you can file Bankruptcy.  In the case of a corporation, Bankruptcy leaves the stockholders holding an empty bag and in the case of city (or state) the taxpayers are the recipients of said empty sack.   If you are a nation you cannot declare Bankruptcy.  Nations can do what we can’t do;  print money.   They start printing more and more paper money and the result is inflation or hyper-inflation.  Inflation is always harmful or catastrophic to those on fixed or limited income (like the elderly) and can make a lifetime of savings do a vanishing act.  As an example, gasoline that used to be $1.50 a gallon becomes $3 or $5 or $10 a gallon.  Math is not evil it is just relentless.

History is littered with the carcasses of nations that did not practice the fiscal discipline required by the laws of mathematics.  The news tells us that our nation is approaching a fiscal “cliff”.

I have reached that point where I recognize that, as a people, we lack the discipline to avoid what is going to happen very soon if we do not make some very difficult and painful changes.  I am not alone in this observation.

Is it already to late?  Is the sky falling?

Bob Bandy

I remember in the movie “The Godfather” when the son Michael killed the “bad” cop and the opposition mobster, how the male members of the Godfathers organization “went to the mattresses”.  Lying low and staying out of sight of their enemies.

I believe that if things continue on their present course in this country with business stifling regulations, high taxes and an all powerful and oppressive government we may see the “producers” in this country simply get fed up and go to the economic mattresses.

Large numbers of former taxpayers may just decide to adjust their lives in such a way as to remain below confiscatory tax thresholds and live simpler lives with lower  economic resources.

I remember a happy young father who worked for me once.  He had a large family and a stay at home wife.  I once asked him how they “made it”?  He told me that they did just fine.  Had an older but serviceable car,  a modest residence and that they lived their lives with a basic but wholesome diet using discounted and coupon items as much as possible.  They rarely bought new consumer items.  They felt no need to impress anyone.  Whenever possible they shopped at thrift stores, yard sales and the like.  When they did shop for “new” items they generally only purchased items at discounted or “sale” prices.   Not a lifestyle for everyone but they were happy, had lots of time for each other, content with their lives and had no debts.  They also paid very little in the way of taxes.  Were they “poor”?  You decide.  It seems to me that they had figured out a way to “Stop Pulling The Wagon” to a large degree.

What would happen if large numbers of  hard working, tax paying members of our citizenry were to adopt similar lifestyles?

Bob Bandy

The great statesman and humanitarian  Mohandas K (Mahatma) Gandhi gave us:

THE SEVEN DANGERS TO HUMAN VIRTUE

1. Wealth without work

2. Pleasure without conscience

3. Knowledge without character

4. Business without ethics

5. Science without humanity

6. Religion without sacrifice

7. Politics without principal

To which I would humbly add a number 8:

8. Democracy without self discipline

Use the above as an ethics and values scorecard and watch Judge Judy as well as many other of the courtroom shows plus an array of the many “reality” shows (Jersey Shores, etc) and observe the antics of groups such as Occupy Wallstreet.  Add to this a thoughtful examination of what goes on in our national and state capitols.

Are we on the right road following the right roll models?

Something to think about.

Bob Bandy