Mexico Jobs, Betty’s Odometer, and State of the Union
by Barry Bauer
American taxpayers borrowed a lot of expensive money to keep General Motors afloat. That means we have a huge stake in GM. So what are they doing? Investing $540 million in a plant (brace yourselves, sure you want to hear this?) in Mexico. You and I are personally sending our manufacturing jobs to Mexico!
What the hell is wrong with us? No wonder Lewis Black goes into a tirade and his right index finger begins to move in some kind of orbit around its socket.
My opinion on this: Bleep bleep bleep. Stupid bleeping bleeps.
If you look up the word stupid in the dictionary it says: “Given to unintelligent decisions or acts.”
Yup, that sounds about right.
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Betty’s odometer rolled over and it was time to apply for her Social Security. Nowadays it’s easy if you can get online with a computer. Or is it? I got on the site and started filling out the form. I got as far as putting in our address and then it sent me an error message. We get regular mail delivered to this same exact address with all its abbreviations but it wasn’t working for the United States government.
I’ve ran into that before when other sites wouldn’t accept St. Johns. It had to be entered as Saint Johns. So I put that in and got the same error message. There was still something wrong with our address. Turns out it was another abbreviation, N. Oakland St. It didn’t accept N. nor did it accept St. so I dropped the period after N. and St. and everything was all better again so I finally completed the form and send it on its way.
Social Security followed this up with a phone call verifying that we were who we said we were so now Betty’s waiting for her first check.
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When a president gives a State of the Union address, we never really hear about what state we’re in, no politician in office wants to talk about that because right now we’re in a sad state of affairs. We just hear another campaign speech from the president which is always filled with broken promises.
Just like that old song says, we need to know what condition our condition is in.
We’re going to fix the economy, claims Obama. We’re going to spend more on education. We already spend more on education than any other industrial nation except one and our students are a long ways from being ranked number one. Money isn’t the answer but do politicians take the time to find out what is?
Hell No!
Whatever the problem is and whether it’s important or not how we do versus the rest of the World, everybody involved is claiming innocence. From parents and students, to teachers and school administrators.
It doesn’t help that kids today have too many distractions.
We’re going to cut deficit spending, we’re told. You want to bet? Our government is so addicted to spending that they will take us to the brink of bankruptcy and beyond. The idea that we’re too big to fail is ridiculous. I’m talking about a wheelbarrow full of dollar bills to buy a loaf of bread.
Check out what some European countries are going through right now.
House Majority Leader, John Boehner, was able to hold back his tears during Obama’s speech. That’s a positive sign because the American people don’t need leaders who cry – it’s a sign of weakness.
The presidential election comes up next year already so we need to pay close attention to the Democrats and the Republicans and see if their deeds match their words.
I think we’re going to be disappointed – again.
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A few thoughts:
What really drives me nuts are photos that are a reverse image. The hair’s parted on the wrong side and the smile cocks the wrong way.
Tom Izzo (and the team) are paying the price for last summer when he couldn’t decide whether he wanted to coach the Spartans or the Cavaliers. Didn’t the same thing happen to George Perles?
Why isn’t there a button on our phone that we can push to block all future phone calls from that number? Is it too simple to exist?
Until the next time . . .