Archive For The “Zingers” Category
By Larry Oscar
Now that the Mueller investigation is completed, you just have to marvel at the absolute stupidity of it all.
It’s not hard to figure out why the 2016 presidential election turned out the way it did. After all it was a perfect storm. And it sure was fun watching it happen. To understand the sequence of events you need to go back to the 1992 election. In 1992 Bill Clinton defeated George Bush because of an independent named Ross Perot. Ross Perot got about 19 percent of the conservative vote which cost George Bush the election.
Now you fast forward to 2016 and you can see what the Clintons were afraid of. This time around they had an independent candidate that was running for president named Bernie Sanders. The only problem, he was a liberal. This must have struck fear into old thunder thighs Hillary. She could see the same thing happening to her as happened with George Bush. So, she cooked up a new strategy.
The Clintons needed to defeat Bernie Sanders in the primary election. That would insure he used up almost all of his campaign funds and prevent him from competing in the general election by running as an independent. So they invited him to compete in the Democratic primary election. The only risk factor was that the Clintons needed to assure themselves there was absolutely no way Bernie could win the primary. They did this by loaning the Democratic Committee over $20 million and rigging the primary election process with so called super delegates. This would insure just in case the primary voters actually voted for Bernie they could nullify the voters choice and coronate queen Hillary.
This is something that every Democrat voter should be up in arms about, but they’re not. Well, maybe one Democrat was. As usual the best plans of mice and men always seem to go awry. Here is good lesson we all should learn. You almost never get into trouble for what you don’t say. You almost always get into trouble for what you do say. With all of their money and political hacks in place there was no way Hillary could lose except for one small detail. Hillary and her cronies had communicated their plans by email to Debbie Wassermann-Shultz who was the DNC party head at that time. And they did it on a server that some stupid Democrat set the computer password to “PASSWORD”.
Now you just can’t make this stuff up. How absolutely stupid can you be? It’s my guess someone who was a Bernie supporter found these emails and was livid about what they had discovered. They turned them over to Wiki Leaks who published them and blew the entire rigged election scheme wide open. Wasserman-Shultz had to resign.
Enough Bernie supporters stayed home or voted for Donald Trump and the rest is now history. Now you throw in all the fake news the Russians posted on the internet. Mix it well with all the stupid things Hillary told the voters like, “We’re going to put a lot of you coal miners out of work. But don’t worry we’re going to retrain you for other jobs.”
Another good one was when she tried to get people who were voting for Trump to support her by calling them deplorable. Every good politician knows you can insult voters into voting for you don’t they? My guess is the one who was most surprised by the 2016 election results was Donald Trump himself.
Now all the while this was going on the FBI and DOJ had their own issues. If they went hard on Hillary for her other e-mail scandal then they were going to be in the Clinton crosshairs after she won the election. They didn’t want to lose their big fat government retirement checks. So Comey, McCabe, Struck, Page, and the rest all played along and let Hillary slide. Then they cooked up an “insurance policy” to prevent Trump from winning by using a Clinton paid for fake dossier from Russia. All to get a FISA court warrant to spy on Trump. This was better than an old Pink Panther movie.
The Clintons are out millions and lost the election. The Mueller investigation cost tax payers well over $25 million. The Democrats are in complete chaos and have a bunch of total losers running for president in 2020. Congress remains dysfunctional and has a group of air heads like AOC and Omar to deal with. And the UK was inspired by this mess and voted to pull out of the European Union.
Now let’s not forget our good old friends the Russians. They succeeded beyond their wildest dreams in disrupting our country. I bet they are sitting around, sipping vodka, and wondering… “How could we have possibly lost that ‘Cold War’ thing to these idiots?”
By Larry Oscar
Well, here we are well into another year. We have a lot more people now that have moved to our lake in Northeastern Oklahoma, and they have come from all parts of the nation and all walks of life. They have brought with them their customs and the local culture from whence they came.
Some of them have found it hard to adjust to our frontier way of life. Oklahoma is just a bit over 100 years old . We have our own way of doing things and our own outlook on life. For the most part we are individual self-reliant people who want to be left alone. The pioneer spirit and that culture of freedom rings true for all Native American people. And in Oklahoma that is our native culture.
That is one reason we see things so different than many of the other more populous states. One thing we are not very good at is following the crowd. We are independent thinkers. Which is one reason we are slower to adopt change. It is also why we don’t suffer the problems that other states get themselves into.
The common sense of the people in Oklahoma is without question. “Look before you leap “ has been a very common practice among our people. It is for that reason we are not in the financial trouble many states are in. We are leaders in many other ways. While we are a heavy oil and gas producing state we are also the third leading producer of wind powered energy.
Our state also has an abundance of lakes and water resources. That is often a shock to those who live in coastal states. I can’t tell you how many times I have heard the phrase “Where do you sail in Oklahoma?” In fact, the Catalina Nationals will be held this summer on Lake Fort Gibson for the second time. I travelled in 48 of our 50 states in my travels. During all of those travels I found no other state that had a better quality of life than we do here in Oklahoma.
One thing that has made Oklahoma a great place to live is our work ethic. We have always been a people that has a “can do” attitude. A strong work ethic and family oriented value system has been a hallmark of the Oklahoma people. My grandfather, Earnest A. Hetherington, owned a farm just west of Cushing, Oklahoma. He fathered and raised 8 children in the middle of the Great Depression and the Oklahoma Dust Bowl.
Yet he never took a single dime of government handout money. It was a matter of pride with him. Compare that with today’s new millennial generation of over emotional whiners and complainers. There is a stark contrast to be made here. It is my belief that the move to a dependant society in our country is due in large part to single parent families.
It was my father that told me to “suck it up, nobody owes you a thing.” If I had been raised only by my mother I would have grown up thinking that we were all just going to dance in the daises and sing kumbaya. The ethics parents pass on to their children does matter. In a world that is growing more emotional and intolerant of others beliefs you can expect change agents to cause a higher degree of social upheaval. Our close link to the values of our forefathers has kept the people of Oklahoma more grounded in reality than other states.
Regardless of the situation you can count on Oklahomans to survive. We have survived floods, tornados, droughts, fires, and even a losing season at OU in our past, and we are still standing tall. So bring on 2019, hoist a few beers, grit your teeth, and hang on.
(Larry Oscar is a graduate from the University of Tulsa and holds a degree in electrical engineering. He is retired and lives with his wife on a lake in Oklahoma where he brews his own beer, sails, and is a member of numerous clubs and organizations.)
By Larry Oscar
During the holiday season we often get caught up with all the commercialism and bombardment of TV adds for new cars, perfumes, and law suits for bad drugs.
With all this commercial madness it’s sometimes hard to reflect on what the true purpose of the season is. I was reminded of that a few weeks ago by one of our lake association members. I asked one of our members whom I had not seen for several months how she was doing. She replied, “I’m blessed.”
No big deal, just a simple statement of fact with a smile. Now if you stop all the hustle and bustle of the season and just think about that you will find it speaks volumes. There are about 195 countries in this weird world of ours. Yet the United States is the only country in the world that people are immigrating too by the millions every year.
In 2017 there were over 1.5 million legal immigrants allowed into our country. And even with that huge number there were tens of thousands of illegal immigrants. Now if you listen to the news media you would have to ask yourself why? According to the news media we are a bunch of racist, homophobic, privileged, rich people who are oppressing the poor workers with evil corporations. And we are doing this by consuming the earths natural resources and responsible for global warming that will cause the seas to rise and drown over half of the earths population.
Now why would anybody want to immigrate to a country like that? After all, according to the news media, we are just a capitalist evil empire. There must be some underlying factor here that we don’t know about. Somehow I don’t think we get all this immigration because people really like moving to a racist bigoted country of oppressors.
The United States is only 5 percent of the entire world’s population, yet we are 25 percent of the world’s economy. Just maybe people are immigrating here because we offer a much better quality of life and opportunity than where they are currently living.
Our top poverty income in the US is about $24,000/yr. Do you know that our closest economic competitor, the EU, has a median income of just $29,000/yr? Our median income is double that. No other continent even comes close to the US in providing economic opportunity. The absolute fact is that if you are born in the United States you are in the top 5 percent of the worlds privileged population.
Now isn’t that a kick in the shorts for all of you people that like to play the victim? All those victim lovers who want to whine about how downtrodden their ancestors were and how miserably they have been discriminated against are actually one of the worlds most privileged. Say it ain’t so Joe! Yep, it is so.
If you don’t believe this just listen to one of those immigrants who walked across Mexico just to get the opportunity to climb over or dig under a fence to set foot on U.S. soil. Would you do that? Would any of us have that much motivation to do that? I think not. We have become a spoiled nation.
We don’t know what it’s like to live under true oppression and tyranny. We see all those idiots who complain and cry out for socialism in our country, but not a single one of them is willing to immigrate to Venezuela to help their socialist brothers out. After all, there is a shortage of latte in Venezuela. If you can’t make it in the United States then you can’t make it anywhere on this planet, period.
We are the world’s land of opportunity. Opportunity is what you make of it. It is not the governments responsibility to give it to you. It is your responsibility to earn it. We strive for equality before the law in our country, but true equality in life is a myth. All of us have differences that tip the scales of opportunity. Life is not fair. Don’t expect it to be. Life has its ups and downs. But one thing is for sure. We are all privileged to live in the United States. So as the new year approaches take some time to think about it. When you are sitting in your warm heated house with indoor plumbing sipping your tea or coffee just contemplate those living in places like North Korea or Somalia.
Think about how your house is stocked with food. How you have a choice of what vehicle to drive to dinner with friends. And how your closet is stuffed with clothes. Most people in this world just have the cloths on their back. Maybe, just maybe, all of you victims will come to the same conclusion as most of us already have. The United States is an independent sovereign capitalist nation that is free of socialist dictators. We are the envy of the world and we are all truly blessed.
(Larry Oscar is a graduate from the University of Tulsa and holds a degree in electrical engineering. He is retired and lives with his wife on a lake in Oklahoma where he brews his own beer, sails, and is a member of numerous clubs and organizations.)
By Larry Oscar
With the midterm elections just days ahead we have once again been bombarded with political ads and special interest groups touting their pleas for special favoritism.
Within the cloud of all this rhetoric you can count on some gems of stupidity surfacing. I guess it will never end. After all politicians are not very intelligent. Especially those that promise how big government can make our lives better.
Most politicians are not very good at simple math. This is a much bigger problem than most of us realize. The entire universe runs on mathematics, not emotion. For this reason most of the solutions to society’s problems cannot be solved by government handouts or “special programs.”
Although tempting government programs end up being a band aid to a problem that either has no solution or is a symptom of a problem and not the problem itself. Take poverty for example. In 1964 President Lyndon Johnson declared a “War on Poverty.” His new big government program was going to eliminate poverty in the United States. It would lift the bottom 15-17 percent of wage earners out of poverty. It was dubbed “The Great Society.”
The big problem is that we have a little math problem here. If you lift the bottom 15-17 percent of wage earners up they are now replaced by the former 18-34 percent who now are the new 15-17 percent in poverty. The GDP bell curve has just shifted to the right and the poverty level gets raised. You will always have a bottom 15-17 percent in poverty. It’s just simple math.
Johnson was not very good at simple math. And what’s amazing is how some of us never learn math. Today we have Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA), that figures, proposing a new government $6,000 per year give away to those in poverty.
“It will lift those in poverty into the middle class” she says. Once again we seem to have not learned a simple math lesson. How easy it is to think socialism is the answer to poverty and all of societies problems. These same clowns like Bernie Sanders just don’t get it. You don’t have to be a genius to understand that there are no quick solutions to most of society’s problems. Take over population for example.
Global over population is a real problem today. It is worse than “climate change’. And it is a simple fact that the greater the global human population the greater will be the stress on the global environment. It’s a simple math deduction. However, there is not a single politician that wants to even talk about over population. Why, because this problem does not have a good solution for the politicians can garnish votes. For that reason we avoid many real problems and instead treat the symptoms.
Over the past few weeks we have all seen the human tragedy of the people from Honduras trying to enter the United States. Honduras is a country with a constitution and elected government officials. However, it is a corrupt country with drug cartels and no real dedication to following their constitution. They take their constitution as a sort of suggestion on how things should run rather than the supreme law of the land. This is something the left in our country would like for us to do. In effect, they want us to be more like Honduras. Never mind the fact the people in Honduras consider living in poverty in the United States a real move upward from where they are now.
Living in poverty in the United States is very attractive to people who live in poverty in other countries. Maybe this is something to consider when these politicians want to make our country more like Europe.
If you really want to learn what other people in different parts of the world live like all you have to do is watch some of the house hunting shows on TV about those from the U.S. moving to other countries. It’s an eye opener.
There is no doubt that we can all improve in what we do and how we act toward others. Our government is paid for by those of us working in the private sector. Without a healthy private sector the public sector cannot survive. For this reason alone big government will never produce a higher quality of life that those on the left imagine. Just look at what is happening in Venezuela today.
It is my hope that we never stop questioning our government or holding politicians accountable for their actions, but it is also my hope we insist our politicians practice civility. It is through learning, civility, and reason we improve our society, and not through the left’s raw emotions.
(Larry Oscar is a graduate from the University of Tulsa and holds a degree in electrical engineering. He is retired and lives with his wife on a lake in Oklahoma where he brews his own beer, sails, and is a member of numerous clubs and organizations.)
By Larry Oscar
With beer in hand a friend of mine asked our eclectic group of old fogies one afternoon about the business practice of removing the company employees that are on the bottom 10 percent of company performers on an annual basis.
This is a common practice in business. One of one of the best CEOs in history, Jack Welch of GE, discusses this in his book Straight From the Gut. It may seem like a cruel thing to do to the bottom company performers, but in reality it is a must. For one thing it is not fair to the other 90 percent by making them carry the poor performance of those in the bottom 10 percent. And upon a close examination good business management requires you face the reality of the situation. It was W.E. Deming, the father of the quality movement in the 1970s -1990s that said that all workers want to do a good job. With that in mind a good manager needs to ask the question “What causes the bottom 10 percent to fail in their job performance?”
Nobody wants to be a drag on the other employees in the company. It is demeaning to your self esteem. So what is the problem? The answers to that question are as varied as the personalities of the people. Many are simply not in a job that gives them enough satisfaction to perform well. Some have been put into jobs that they do not have the education, skills, or talent to accomplish. They may have taken the job because it pays well, or they may have assumed it was going to be more satisfying than it turned out to be. This is not a new problem.
The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. In the early 1970s I was working in outside sales for The Foxboro Company. The company manufactured instrumentation and control systems for the process industries. They were a leader in quality products and the technology of the time. Shortly after I joined the company one of our other employees in outside sales left for a position closer to his home. Our office manager hired a young engineer from Sun Pipeline Company to fill the vacancy. Buddy was a good engineer and had always wanted to see what outside sales was like. It was a job that attracted him. After all it came with a company car, an expense account, and you were not tied to a desk all day. All in all this was a well paying attractive position. What more could you want?
Well Buddy lasted a little over a year before he returned to Sun Pipeline. He told me that at Sun Pipeline he could leave his desk and go home to his family. The outside sales job here was a 24/7 business. Even when he was at home his mind was constantly thinking about the job. His performance reflected the stress of the job. It wasn’t that Buddy could not do the work. It was that the work required a sacrifice that Buddy didn’t want to make. And not many people can fit into this type of job. It can be a home wrecker.
Buddy became a Vice President for Sun Pipeline and today he has his own consulting business. He has had a fruitful and successful career. Hats off to Buddy. He possessed the ability to recognize that he was not cut out for outside sales and took appropriate steps to rectify the situation. This brings us back to the problem of the bottom 10 percent. You see, many people are not as smart as Buddy. They continue in a position they will never succeed in. They need a push. Companies are not government social programs or government agencies that let people become zombies in their work. This is one of the reasons why our government agencies have so many problems in performing.
Company managers are not doing the bottom 10 percent any favors by tolerating poor performance. The best thing a good manger can do is face the reality of the situation and let them move on. They may not realize it at the time, but the absolute worst thing you can do to an employee is allow them to stay in a position that they cannot perform in. The same goes for people who own their own businesses. They start a business and soon become trapped in the situation after they discover that the business they thought was going to be great simply is not.
Your work should be satisfying to your soul. You should have a sense of accomplishment when all is said and done. If not, make a change. It is better to have tried and failed than not to have tried at all. And just because you fail at something does not mean you will fail at everything. Many times you can learn from failures better than successes. Humans are adaptable. The risk of failure is a fact of life, but it should not be a roadblock to our Constitutional right to pursue happiness.
By Larry Oscar
With the increased amount of political activity our roads have been littered with all shapes and sizes of “Vote for Me ” yard signs. I counted 23 yard signs at one intersection alone.
What is note worthy is how they seem to magically appear overnight. They are kind of like the toad stools that appears after a recent rain. I’ll be glad when this is all over and the attack of these pests recedes into the sunset. What is interesting is how the candidates try to “Out-sign” their opponent. You can find four or five of the same sign within five feet of each other. I got news for you. If they spend that much money wastefully by placing four or five of the same sign in one spot, just think how they will spend your tax dollars.
We should vote for the candidate that didn’t litter the road with their signs. What would even be better would be for the bozo politician running for office to fix a pothole in the road with his sign money. He could spray paint over the fixed pothole and say “Vote for me, because I fixed this pothole.” That way we could kill two birds with one stone. And for sure we would vote for any bozo politician who fixes potholes rather than litters our roads.
Stealing political yard signs is illegal, but do we really want our police force spending time guarding these stupid signs. We should charge the politicians a fee for guarding their signs. Maybe they would plant fewer signs if they had to pay a sign security fee. What amazes me is what you don’t see. There was not one single negative yard sign. It seems to me that with all the negative radio and TV adds that there ought to be at least one negative yard sign.
How about a sign that reads “Don’t vote for Fisher cause he sucks eggs!” Now that would lighten up your day when driving to and from work wouldn’t it? “Did you know Bob Smith, who is running for Governor, is sleeping with your wife?” Or maybe “County Commissioner Sam Wilson has jock itch!” I think there is a real opportunity here to throw dirt on your opponent that they are flat out missing. The cost of these signs is about $2 – $4 each, so the total cost can’t be cheap when you add up how many there are.
This may explain the ever stretched out hands of the politicians looking for campaign contributions. What any smart candidate should do is ask for a donation with a promise not to use it for yard signs. How about handing out political cigars. Now that is something I could support. Yard signs are really not very effective. According to one study between 1984 and 2012 the use of political yard signs quadrupled. Yet they are only about 1.7 percent effective and have about the same effect as direct mail. That makes them 98.3 percent ineffective, for those politicians who can’t do simple math. And I’m sure a lot of them can’t.
Recently I asked one candidate why anyone would want to run for one of these worthless positions. The answer I got back was “maybe for prestige.” Can you imagine what a miserable life some people must have if that’s the main reason they are running for office? I never stopped to think about it, but I do seem to remember how our state legislators run around calling each other “senator” like it was some big shot title. Ego has no bounds. Then there are the politicians that thinks they can “make a difference.” How naive. History is full of these misguided souls.
Somehow these types all seem to end up with a bitter and cynical outlook on life. Societies all repeat history because they never can learn from it. One thing I have observed is that when the cycle of change occurs over several generations the younger generation tends to repeat the sins of their fathers almost without exception. Maybe that is because they never experienced the problems and failures of the past. And after all, they think that they can deal with it because they are more “enlightened” than their parents and grandparents were.
As the world enters a period of over population, and with the problems that will bring, we must all do a reality check. The truth is that some problems have no good solution. We must just learn to deal with them. This may be hard for some to accept, but it does not make it any more untrue. Facts are facts and our ability to deal with most of our problems in society is limited at best. This has been proven time and time again. The same will be for yard signs I guess.
As the years go buy I’m sure they will only proliferate. Although I do hope they gravitate toward some good old negative humor and mud slinging. Or maybe an honest campaign sign that reads “Vote for me because I’m running for this office to get away from my wife.” It helps if we all keep our sense of humor you know.
(Larry Oscar is a graduate from the University of Tulsa and holds a degree in electrical engineering. He is retired and lives with his wife on a lake in Oklahoma where he brews his own beer, sails, and is a member of numerous clubs and organizations.)
By Larry Oscar
As things finally begin to heat up, and after a long cold winter caused by global warming, I’m sure all the nut cases will be out in full force. Especially because this is an election year.
Some politicians are already promising government handouts for votes paid for by your tax dollars. I’m sure it will only get worse when the politicians start honking like a flock of geese. This nation is a far cry from when our forefathers founded it.
Our government is one big bloated expensive mess and the self-reliant people that founded this country have been replaced by people found in safe rooms of emotional quality at Berkeley. I was going through some old family documents a few weeks ago when I found my grandfather’s deed to the farm he bought in 1916. The farm was just west of Cushing, Oklahoma. He was born in 1891 and married Mary Permilla Powell.
My grandfather, Earnest Alvin Hetherington, was a father of eight children. He lived during WW1 and WW2, and fed his family throughout the Great Depression and Oklahoma Dust Bowl. Grandpa was just about as self reliant as they come. I never remember him complaining about anything. Not even the weather. He faced life as it was dealt to him and he expected his children and everybody else to do the same. There was no crying at the farm.
Earnest was a tough minded individual. He had a high bar for good behavior and would not tolerate whiners. The family farm house was heated with wood and light was provided by a kerosene lantern or candle. The water was drawn from a spring and with that large of a family they had a two hole outhouse of course. One day grandpa was cutting firewood with a buzz saw and the wood slipped. He lost his thumb, but he just wrapped up his hand and finished the job.
When you stop and think about how life was 100 years ago you can understand just how far our strength of character has fallen. You had to be self-reliant to survive back then. Today our nation’s people need to have everything done for them. We have become a nation of mooching emotional wimps. More and more of our children are growing up depending on government or special interest groups for everything in their lives. They don’t think for themselves.
This just may be the major factor in our nation’s deterioration of character. Instead they let the group think for them. This is very dangerous for our nation. From this type of thought you will hear the cry, “We are all in this together and I need to be in charge.” This is how all the brutal dictators throughout history have come to power. Today over half of this nation goes into emotional meltdown over a simple election loss. Some of our states have gone so far off the rails that they will probably never get back on track. Their state government will have to be bulldozed over like an old rotting abandoned house and a new one built.
Our ancestors of just 100 years ago were self thinkers and self doers. My grandpa was a carpenter, farmer, plumber, lumberjack, and tradesman of every kind. He tilled soil with a horse drawn plow, grew crops, raised chickens and pigs, and even assisted in childbirth. In the late 1940’s he bought a brand spanking new Ford tractor under protest. He was overruled by his children as he now was getting too old to plow fields with a horse.
It wasn’t until the late 1950’s that my mother and her siblings convinced him to switch from firewood to propane heating. When my grandpa was in his early 80s he could not take care of the farm anymore and had to move to town. He protested again, but his family insisted. I’m not sure if he would have been better off if he had just stayed on the farm. He passed away a few years after moving to Cushing. Losing his self-reliance was like losing part of his soul.
I have never forgot his strength of character and the tough determination he faced his life’s challenges with. He was an inspiration. Will the youth of today regain the ability to think and do for themselves, or will they continue to descend into reliance on the collective? That question has yet to be answered, but reading the tea leaves of today don’t bode well for our future.
(Larry Oscar is a graduate from the University of Tulsa and holds a degree in electrical engineering. He is retired and lives with his wife on a lake in Oklahoma where he brews his own beer, sails, and is a member of numerous clubs and organizations.)
By Larry Oscar
My how time seems to fly by. This column (Zingers) has had a controversial life for over 13 years. The Wave (a newsletter of which my Zingers column appears), being a early adapter of fake news, has provided many articles for our readers to think and laugh about. Most filled with half truths that require some thought as to their accuracy and credible content. The Zingers section was originally written to make people think about how they think.
Many subjects of politics are shunned by newsletters, but Zingers fears no man and lays it out for all to consider. We have tried to present views that approach the subject of the day for all to contemplate and relate to the readers lives. We understand that many of our readers have diametrically opposed views about life, but that should not stop us from discourse on controversial subjects. Which leads us to the subject of this article.
For some time now we have all heard complaints about our nation being “divided.” For some reason this seems to be news to people. So here we go….NEWS FLASH!!!!…We have always been a divided nation. In fact the only times we have been united were in times of war with outside enemies. We are designed to be a divided nation.
Our nation is a collection of individual states that are to be the principal governance of the people that live within the state. The federal government was designed to provide only narrow areas of governance. Those areas are defense against external and internal threats, provide an administration of justice, and regulate fair commerce between the states and other nations.
Unfortunately we have strayed way beyond the original intent of our nation as designed by the founding fathers. This is the reason our federal government seems not to be working. We are trying to make the federal government do things it was never designed to do.
You wouldn’t use a screw driver to hammer in a nail would you? Then why would you expect the federal government to do what the state governments are designed to do? The answer to that question is that many of our people and leaders are confused about what the roll of each should be. We are a nation of extreme diversity. Our founding fathers understood this and that is why we have such a heavy emphasis on state governments. Each state has it’s own constitution that governs its people. Some vary greatly. Now why is that? The answer is to allow for the diversity of the culture of our many peoples.
With different cultures there is no “one size fits all” government solution. Some people have very emotional social needs and are fundamentally insecure. They need to have many aspects of their life controlled, and they are emotionally satisfied by being part of a collective. In fact, having to make life altering decisions is down right scary for these folks. Liberty for these people is not as important. They will sacrifice their liberty for security. Other people are independent and self-reliant. They must have the freedom to make their own decisions in life free from government control. These people will fight and die for individual freedom.
When you consider these two extremes we must also understand that most people lie between these points of view. And each of them has a desire to live according to their tolerance of control versus freedom. This diversity is what has made the United States a “melting pot” for the world. We must never let the tyranny of the majority take root in our country and use an overpowering federal government to impose their version of liberty on the rest of us. We must respect the rights of the people in each state to live differently. If we continue to try to impose our will on others by using a strong and over regulating federal government our nation will dissolve.
Each state must stand on its own two feet. States must not turn to the federal government for a solution to every problem they have. Solutions and governments work best when they are closest to the people. It is this fact that makes our current federal government bloated and inefficient. Adding more people to federal government bureaucracies and throwing more money at our problems is not the solution. The solution for government to work in a nation built on diversity rests in the principle government being the state governments.
Unfortunately, many states have done a poor job in governing themselves. They have turned to the federal government to do the jobs they should be responsible for. We must hold all states accountable to their people. And it’s OK to be divided on how we live our lives. After all, we are just a big “box of chocolates.”
(Larry Oscar is a graduate from the University of Tulsa and holds a degree in electrical engineering. He is retired and lives with his wife on a lake in Oklahoma where he brews his own beer, sails, and is a member of numerous clubs and organizations.)
Consumer confidence is at an all time high. Businesses are bringing back thousands of jobs and foreign investment in the United States is growing by leaps and bounds. GDP is over 3.3 percent, double the Obama years, and may top 4 percent by the end of 2018. We have a stock market at an all time high, and businesses are planning on expanding and adding new services.
Yes, the rich are getting richer, but who cares. All of your money, my money, and Bill Gates money is just a number in a bank’s computer anyway. Regardless of how you may feel about Donald Trump you must ask yourself this simple question. Are the poor among us better off with jobs that create value and pay higher wages? Or are the poor better off having to work at teenager jobs that pay minimum wage?
It is well past time that we set aside the petty emotions of envy and jealousy of the rich that are among us and face the realities of modern life. People do not and will not thrive in a socialist society. There is no such thing as “free. Everything in life must be paid for. No system is perfect and some people will always be left behind. There will be winners and losers in everything that life has to offer. But the vast majority of people are better served when they are free to prosper and grow as they desire. When people are free to use their own ideas, talents, and hard work to create value we are all better off as a society. Life does not come without risks. You will make some bad decisions and suffer the consequences from them. And we will always have the poor. They are the bottom 16 percent of the bell curve. It’s simple math folks.
The poor will always be with us, but they will be much better off in a society with a median income of $60,000 than a society with a median income of $9,000. As a free people we will prosper. Too much government is a bad thing. For some reason this is a hard lesson for some folks to learn.
(Larry Oscar is a graduate from the University of Tulsa and holds a degree in electrical engineering. He is retired and lives with his wife on a lake in Oklahoma where he brews his own beer, sails, and is a member of numerous clubs and organizations.)
By Larry Oscar
I get a lot of questions these days about business. Maybe it’s because we are finally beginning to see some light at the end of an eight-year tunnel after the United States has had the most anti business leadership in U.S. history.
Or maybe it’s because we now have a business man in the White House rather than a career politician. For whatever the reason this is a positive sign. It has always been my contention business is a natural right of man. Just as is free speech or freedom of association, business is also a natural state of mankind. The right to produce more than you need and barter or sell the excess for a profit is a natural right that goes all the way back to the cave men.
Capitalism, by its very nature, is a natural state of man. It is human nature to want to look over the fence and desire the things we don’t currently have. However, there are many among us today that let their jealousy and envy rule their hearts. They think that success is evil, and that our lives need to be controlled or we will have the successful among us make the unsuccessful “feel” bad.
Somehow their little minds think the insecure emotions of others are someone else’s responsibility. No where was this stupid idea more prevalent than in the Obama administration. Obama and his minions spent almost all their time trying to stop the rich from getting richer. And they did this at the expense of the poor. They had the idea somehow by keeping the rich from getting richer it was going to benefit the poor. Instead it had the opposite effect. By keeping the rich from getting richer Obama constrained business growth and the jobs that businesses create.
This left the poor with the lowest wage growth in U.S. history. We saw business after business either move out of our country or close its doors. Workers had to take the jobs of teenagers just to provide for their families. Many of us who understand how business works were vehemently opposed to Obama’s stupid socialistic ideas, but when we spoke out we were accused of being racist.
Obama got a pass because of the color of his skin. Shame on those of you who let Obama suck you in. Under the Obama administration the United States had to suffer from the poorest example of leadership we may have ever had. Obama added $10 trillion to the nation’s debt with big government spending and what do we have to show for it? He drew red lines in the sand that were meaningless. Anybody with half a brain knows threats never work.
He told us the lost jobs aren’t coming back” and that a 1 ½ percent increase in the GDP was the new normal . Obama was the champion of mediocrity. My how fast times change. It has only been a year since Donald Trump, a business man, took office and look at where our business community is now.
(Larry Oscar is a graduate from the University of Tulsa and holds a degree in electrical engineering. He is retired and lives with his wife on a lake in Oklahoma where he brews his own beer, sails, and is a member of numerous clubs and organizations.)