These are in no particular order. The first one is no more important than the last one. If you think you can state it better, leave a comment. If you disagree, leave a comment. If you have a contribution to make and I deem it worthy, I will amend the list and re-publish.
1. The only thing a degree from Harvard proves is that your family spent a lot of money for a piece of paper.
2. Having grown old in the United States after WWII simply means you are lucky and is no indication alone that you have a shred of wisdom.
3. Men with strong sex drives and women with weak sex drives tend to marry each other and vice versa.
4. Hoplophobes (Gun Fearing Wussies) not only can't stand being around weapons, but they want to deny everybody else from being around them as well.
5. Hoplophobes in the United States walk around oblivious to the fact that they enjoy relative safety because people like me are trained, ready, and able to put bullets into a bad guy in less than two seconds.
6. Anyone who buys supermarket tabloids such as the STAR, et al, should be required to surrender their voter registration cards, on the spot, to the cashier. Only after passing an intelligence test and a test on the constitution, would such a person be allowed to vote again.
7. Anyone who does not know the names of both of their Senators and the name of their Representative in the U.S. Congress, must immediately surrender their right to vote until they pass the requirements of item #6.
8. No person receiving welfare, in any form, including: food stamps, medicaid, medicare, social security, or the evil "earned income tax credit," should be allowed to vote.
9. Any person who actually has a few thousand dollars withheld from his paycheck and then believes that the IRS "gave" him money after April 15th, should be slapped and denied the right to vote for at least two years.
10. If you think that medical treatment, housing, and a living wage are "rights," you should immediately be put aboard a C-5 and airdropped over the nearest communist country, where they think like you do. You will have to provide for your own parachute, since they are not listed as a right.
11. Public education is when you take your own home-schooled child on a field trip to a museum or zoo or factory, etc. Government education is that catastrophe that the taxpayers are funding to propagandize children into socialism.
12. "One of the sad signs of our times is that we have demonized those who produce, subsidized those who refuse to produce, and canonized those who complain." -- Thomas Sowell
13. In a free society, 95% employment is the absolute optimum, because only in a communist society is everyone guaranteed a job.
14. Only in a free market economy can things be so good that at least 5% of the population is between a job and a better job.
15. Considering how many laws are currently on the books; if you hear someone utter the words, "There oughtta be a law," just beat the hell out of them.
16. The Supreme Court of the United States is now the most dangerous oligarchy the world has ever seen. What part of "Congress shall make no law" (1st Amendment) and "Shall not be infringed" (2nd Amendment) do you not understand? You arrogant freakin' tyrants!
This is by no means the last you'll see of this post. Get crackin' people!
There oughtta be a law against posts like this! WAIT!! I'm sure there is, somewhere....let me look, I'll find it!
Posted by: larry | December 26, 2003 at 08:55 PM
A suggestion to add:
Persons receiving food stamps must voluntarily give up to the state all their multiple gold neclaces, gold rings they wear on all ten of their fingers, any toe rings, and all body piercing ornamentation jewelry, etc. Only a wedding band may be kept (but they are usually too few and far between). They must also give up acrylic nail upkeep, giving that money previously ill spent to the state before receiving their monthly allotment of food stamps.
Posted by: Ms Anna | December 27, 2003 at 12:44 AM
Having missed voting only in one local primary since I was 21, I have some reservations about number 8 including those who receive social security and medicare not being able to vote.
With absolutely NO PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY and no desire for it, I am the recepient of a 100% Disability Retirement from the U.S. Postal Service. I would much rather not have residual nerve damage from Bi-Lateral Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, caused by my job of a Letter Sorting Machine Operator.
Prior to a supervisor's suggestion, at that time thought to be a brilliant way to reduce the man hours required to fully staff an LSM machine, LSM Operators where on a 3-person team for a 30/10 minute rotation schedule. After keying zip codes for thirty-minutes, the Operator got a 10-minute rotation to pulling the mail from the sorted bins and placing the mail in sacks or trays for dispatch. At the end of the 10-minute break from keying, the operator took the next person's place in the rotation. There were two "teams" who rotated, not on cleaning out the sorted bins, but loading the ledges, keeping mail on the in-take belt.
After the supervisors suggestion, Operators keyed zip codes for 45-minutes, then rotated clearing the bins or loading ledges for 15-minutes in 4-person teams. The 45/15 minute rotation saved one full man-hour for each hour the machine was operating. Actually, it was a bottom-line boon to the U.S. Postal Service, but not to the Operators involved.
The results, although OSHA gave out warnings to the Postal Service for years, and grievances were filed for years, were many, many cases of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. With the 30/10 minute rotation, there were very few cases. The major cause of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome in LSM Operators was finally proven to be the 45/15 minute rotation schedule. But too late for me. The few LSM machines still operating in the U.S. Postal Service are back to the 30/10 minute rotation schedule, with fewer new cases of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome.
Although my local P.O. facility no longer has LSM machines, my hands are ruined for any repetitive activity, even typing on a nine-to-five basis. Because of ligament release surgury, I have work-place restrictions, such as picking up 4-7 pounds using both hands. I can not do anything repetitively. I can not drive for extended periods of time. I can not work in cold environments. I can not work using machinery which vibrates. And there are more restrictions, that extend into my personal life. My whole life-style was changed because of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. And not because I wanted to receive a 100% Disability Retirement of Social Security, Medicare A and B, and a U.S. Postal Service supplimentary payment.
I was "retired" at the age of 47, offical date of July 1, 1996. My life-style has radically altered, and my normal "retirement" years will not have the benefit of the extra retirement savings investment opportunities I was participating in until I became unemployed, and can no longer afford to continue adding to those investments.
So, you want to take away my voting rights, also?
No way, Jose. I didn't ask for this, and I didn't want it. I fought to keep my job. I'll fight to keep my voting rights, too.
Posted by: Ms Anna | December 27, 2003 at 01:28 AM
The link to "Who Tends the Fires" didn't work for me. Do you have any suggestions?
Posted by: Ms Anna | December 27, 2003 at 01:38 AM
Time was, the overwhelming majority of us could say to an officeholder or bureaucrat, "My taxes pay your wages. You work for me. Understood?"
It's not so any more. It ought to be. Here's how we can get there:
1. Any person who receives a payment from some level of government shall not be permitted to vote for officeholders in that level, for a period of one year from the last such payment. This shall include both persons who work for the government, whether as civilians or as members of the armed services, and persons who receive non-wage payments from it. (Sorry, Ms. Anna, but you have no "right" to vote. That's a misuse of the language, which I'll get around to later in the day at the Palace.)
2. Any person who draws more than 50% of his annual income from a company whose gross sales are more than 50% to some level of government shall not be permitted to vote for officeholders at that level, for a period of one year from the termination of said condition. This shall include both direct employees, consultants, and subcontractors. (There, I just gave up my own "right" to vote; I'm a military engineer.)
3. There shall be no more provision of cash welfare payments. Welfare shall only be provided as four types of non-fungible goods:
-- food,
-- clothing,
-- shelter,
-- a compulsory primary-school education for any person in need of supervision (i.e., a minor being supported by the welfare system) who cannot demonstrate an eighth-grade reading level or a knowledge of basic civics.
4. No legislative organ at any level of government shall enact or increase any tax without a supermajority of two-thirds of all members. NOTE: Said supermajority shall not apply to the number of members voting, but to the sum total of all members of the body. Furthermore, any tax so enacted or increased must be ratified within sixty days by a popular referendum, in which no fewer than fifty percent of the registered voters of the affected locale shall take part, and which must approve the tax by a two-thirds supermajority of those voting.
5. All legislative measures which enact government payments of any kind, excepting statutorily defined wages to duly employed government workers and to persons in the armed services, shall be subject to a sunset provision that requires their reapproval each year. No measure which enacts a payment of any kind shall include a schedule of increase, nor shall such a measure enact any form of payment or compensation to any person other than a duly employed government worker or a person in the armed services.
Thoughts?
Posted by: Francis W. Porretto | December 27, 2003 at 08:09 AM
Sorry, Ms ANNA, but I stick to my contentions. Professor Poretto makes excellent points to back me up. Regardless of those fine points, it goes back to the fact that NO ONE forced you to chase after a job with the government.
There needs to be some check and balance system to offset the hideous socialist bureaucratic nightmare. How is it sane that people who CHOOSE to work for taxpayers can have a union to use taxpayer dollars to coerce legislators (also paid by taxpayers) to insure that taxpayers will provide them with guaranteed employment and medical care and pensions?
Sorry, but that is as wrong as wrong can be.
Don't you dare give me that bullshit that you didn't "choose" it. Oh yeah, you didn't want it, but nobody held a gun to your head and said, "You WILL be a postal worker."
The fact that over 43% of all jobs in this country are in some form of government is all the evidence I need to prove that you are wrong. This country is on a collision course with a socialist police state because government employees will vote for politicians who will protect their jobs.
You got paid from my hard labor and you will continue to be cared for by my labor, and because I am self employed, if I can no longer work, I will only get the minimum subsistence to keep me alive in poverty.
When I can no longer hear or see a news story in which a welfare broodmare refers to her welfare check as her "salary," I might start to change my mind.
Posted by: Commander Will | December 27, 2003 at 10:50 PM
#12 and #16 say it all! Don't totally agree on Soc. security/Medicare recipients not having the vote, for the rest, Right on!
Posted by: delftsman3 | January 01, 2004 at 06:14 PM