A mark of humanity - planning for the future

Just one quick news item: Bush, Mr. America, Mr. If-you're-not-with-us-you're-pro-terrorism, handed down a pardon today to Leslie Owen Collier for VIOLATING THE BALD AND GOLDEN EAGLE PROTECTION ACT. To be fair, I'm sure it was warranted, but how do you stand for all that is symbolically American while allowing people to use pesticides banned for their effect on bald eagles? Seems stupid to me. He's done worse. I just thought this was funny.

I hate Kornheiser from MNF. He got slapped down by Jaworski near the end of the game for saying stupid shit like "what do people think of the decision to let Favre go now?". Jaws made a great point after listening to this dribble, one I'm sure most of America missed. Jaws said that the decision to let Favre go was made in the LONG TERM INTEREST of the packers.

This is one of the beauties of being human- the ability to plan for the future. Humans have the unique ability to plan long term projects, set goals that will not be completed for months, and invest in ideas that may not pay off for a decade. But, historically speaking, particularly under capitalist doctrine, it's all about the short term. It's the 'what have you done for me lately' syndrome. Not turning a profit this quarter? Fire the exec and bring in someone else. Fire the lowest ranks and dump more work on fewer people. (Note: this is called "enhancing productivity"). Rather than improving the business or attracting new customers that will provide long-term profit and stability, we focus on the next financial report. We don't care about the health of the company so long as they pay their dividends on time.

Now, to be fair, there have been extraordinary periods (think FDR public works or Eisenhower's interstate freeway system) when we HAVE invested in things for the future at the expense of some current consumption. The building of the hydroelectric dams provided the energy needed to power the industrialism of the twentieth century (and was responsible for us winning WWII). The freeway system allowed awesome transportation of goods and services. The national power grid (when it was first put together) was over-built in order for later expansion. All of these things helped make America the great place that it is.

But now we're not doing that. We're not investing in the future. We're haggling over a few billion dollars that could be used to build state-of-the-art water treatment facilities, schools, universities, parks, museums, and roadways. We're spending trillions (TRILLIONS!!!) on wars, missiles, and nukes. We've reset our priorities and they seem to be narrowly focused and have no provisions for what will happen, planned or unplanned, in the next two, three, five, or ten years.

This mentality can be shown no clearer than by GM, Ford, and Chrysler showing up in D.C. begging for money. For 20 years they've been outsold and out managed. They've continued building trucks and SUVs when the market was CLEARLY shifting to smaller cars, higher quality cars, and better warranties. Rather than making the necessary business changes they chose to keep following the path of short term profits (a la high-priced SUVs) at the expense of long-term liquidity, long term market position, and long term survival. Now they expect the taxpayer to cover their complete ineptitude and allow them a few more years of life to play catch-up using our dollars instead of their own.

I hear people cry that now is not the time to invest in new mass transportation infrastructure, not the time to pay down the national debt, not the time to invest in human capital (education, job training, etc). When, exactly, IS the right time? Obviously the last 20 years weren't right since we are still lacking those things. But the situation is worse because we have no plans and the system that WAS put in place (with great foresight I might add) is aging and dying or becoming irrelevant in our changing social and economic landscape. The few things we've managed to invest in are great, but are still totally inadequate for what's coming even 10 years down the line. Adding three buses a year does almost nothing to alleviate our transportation problem or our addiction to oil. Also, has the price of this stuff EVER gone down? Are we waiting for liquidation sales for this stuff or what?

Bottom line: we are NOT preparing our children for the high-tech jobs of the information age, we are NOT prepared for the strain of additional people on our power grids or transportation networks, and we are NOT prepared for the changes that are needed in our energy usage and fossil fuel dependency. We are not using our ability to plan for the future to actually do that. This lack of action and investment will only hurt us in both the short term and the long term. Thank you, Jaws, for making the point. It's just as important in football as it is in the real world. And we are failing miserably.

How stupid can you possibly be?

I couldn't pass this up. The headline: Fears of Democrat crackdown lead to gun sales boom. The gist of gun owners and sellers: Obama will make it difficult or impossible to buy assault weapons and/or will take away your right to own guns.

Fact: Obama has supported curbs on gun purchases, including for automatic weapons and assault rifles. This in no way takes away your right to own a gun.

Fact: Obama would like to implement increased responsibility for gun owners and sellers and has voted to allow gun manufacturers to remain open to lawsuits. (Which is only fair- cigarette companies are responsible for deaths caused by their products, car makers are responsible for their safety systems and crash tests, food companies are responsible for illnesses cause by their food, so why should gun manufacturers get some kind of special free pass?)

Where, exactly, did Obama ever say, act, or think to take away people's "2nd amendment rights"? I put that in quotes because, like much of the Constitution, it's debatable how it has been applied in practice. If you think Obama is going to roll into the White House and start smacking down gun ownership laws, I think you're too stupid to own a gun. If you think Obama is going to "take away your rights" you're also stupid. Let me explain.

Over the past 6 years, Americans have lost or had reduced more rights than you can shake a stick at. Just to name a few- you can now be spied on via wiretaps on your phones with no probable cause, your right of habeus corpus can be suspended because the government says so in any case they claim is "terror related", the right to a free press has been infringed by the subpoena of confidential sources and subsequent jailing of reporters for not divulging them, your rights to privacy with companies you do business with have been trampled because of data retention policies that increase data storage and force businesses to turn over that data to the government with no questions asked and no recourse to discuss the matter (via National Security Letters- look it up), your rights of privacy and travel have been severely restricted via random checkpoints set up in border zones that can check documentation and personal items such as laptops without reasonable cause (not just border crossing points- actual checkpoints within the country that are slowly moving further inland and require you to show citizenship status), and your right to information about government actions and policies has been trampled via denials of reasonable Freedom of Information requests.

Someone explain to me why fools are screaming about gun rights that HAVE NOT been infringed upon in any way yet, but are absolutely silent about these other horrific abuses and proscriptions on basic rights. If you think Obama will take away your rights but Bush somehow preserved them, you're living in fantasy land. All we've done over the past 6 years is quietly lose rights or have those rights severely reduced. There are a few groups fighting (the EFF, the ACLU, etc), but so few people paid any attention and willingly went along with these horrific policies in the name of "security". Just so we're clear- trading your rights for ANYTHING only delivers that much more control to the people that provide what you traded for. Personally, I'll live in a world with an incomprehensibly small chance of being the victim of a terror attack and keep my rights to privacy and a free press. People died to give us those rights in the first place. Now we're tossing them aside to feel safe and turning them over to a group of people that, while duly elected, do not necessarily have the best interests of the general populace at heart.

So gun people, shut the hell up and stop saying stupid shit. No one is taking your precious guns away. Obama is not going to somehow repeal the second amendment. If you want rights, march your asses to D.C. and demand back the rights that have already been taken, not the ones you imagine might be in the future. Let's get back to where we started and then worry about what may or may not happen.