You Will Suffer Long and Hard

My Flag Flies Everyday

My Flag Flies Everyday

The Sunday May 24 edition of the Chicago Tribune ran an article titled, “Adding Up What CEOs Made.”  The piece includes a list of the 100 top companies in Chicago and Northern Indiana, and the total compensation package the CEOs receive. Even though the title says “Adding Up…” it doesn’t really add it up. They only list 100 salaries, but I went to the trouble to input them into a spreadsheet to get the sum. I was curious to see what the flap is about the outrageous salaries being used to demonize Capitalism. The media has been busy barraging us with huge bonuses and salaries being paid. They bark the  need for regulation. This is truly the output of a socialist mindset.

I was surprised by the total of the top 100 salaries,  by the rate at which the salaries drop. Granted there isn’t a poor guy on the list, and the money they make in a year is more than most of us will earn in a lifetime. These CEOs lead companies that are producing and selling billions of dollars in products and services. Why is there such a penis envy of these leaders for their compensation? Are we envious? Do we want to lead the same life style they do? Do we want to work 24/7  to the detriment of our families? Why do we resent high salaries? The left leaning individual resents it because he truly believes the CEO and the company has made that salary off the sweat of his brow. Most employees will work forty hours per week at some incremental position stocking shelves or answering phones, or taking orders, but they are paid commensurate with the requirements of the position. What that employee doesn’t seem to understand is that his job is a commodity. There is a supply and demand for workers. The salary he is paid  is competitive with other companies who need the same level of skill.

The liberal also argues that the wealth paid to  CEO’s must be redistributed to those who are less fortunate. This is the reason for my article today. If we were to take all the money paid to the top CEOs in the country what magnitude of social spending would it  pay for?

Here are some facts and assumptions:

1.) The accumulative  salary paid to the CEOs of the top 100 companies in Illinois, as stated in the Tribune article, is  $559,940,329.00. This is a little more than a half billion dollars.

2.) Assume that every state in the union has a list of 100 top companies whose CEOs are paid the same. For the sake of simplicity let me use round numbers (50 x $600,000,000) = 30 billion dollars.

3.) Assume that I am too low and I am off by a factor of 10, the number becomes $300 billion dollars.

Wow! that is a lot of money, but wait, the TARP cost over two times that much, the stimulus package cost over three times that much,  and the proposed Federal Budget will cost over five times that much.

Here is my argument. We have just taken away all the money made by the top 50,000 executives in the USA and given it to the government to pay for it’s super duper programs, and we have barely paid for 11.4 % of it. Where will the remaining 88.6% come from?

Liberals don’t give up easy. They will argue that the remainder will come from taxing the companies that these CEOs lead. Okay, how many of these CEOs will work their ass off for $1.00? Even a liberal would have to agree that a salary of $1.00 per year would make life hard. Most likely, none of them would. They will quit, or let the company be run by the worker bees who believe it is by the sweat of their balls that the big money is made. (It will be interesting to see if the UAW can run Chrysler and compete in the world market.)

Actually, what will happen, is that none of the above will play out. The CEOs will continue to work for big money because that is the market value of their skills, and the Government will tax the living hell out of everyone to make up the money needed to implement thier utopian schemes. In the end, they will destroy the greatest country on earth and the deny the liberty of each and every one of us.

All of you youngsters out there who voted for “Change We Can Believe In,” have fun. I am near the end of my life cycle, and will not live to see too much grief.  You are going to suffer long and hard for your decision to take the country into this devastating direction.

Leadership is an Art-form

My Flag Flies Everyday

My Flag Flies Everyday

Leadership is an art-form. It takes substantial training, disposition, and intelligence to become a leader. What I am witnessing in the new administration is a lack of real leadership.  My own  tenure in leadership lasted forty two years. I have led projects and departments of many people throughout my career, I understand what it takes to lead. In addition to my professional career, I spent twenty five years as a volunteer in the Boy Scouts of America organization as a Cub Master, Scout Master, District Training Chairman, and more. What I see in our Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner is an inability to put a handle on what it takes to run his department. The job is huge, yet he refuses to appoint anyone to assist him. A good leader is only as good as his smartest people. If he was really wise, he’d find people who could do the job better than him.  I can recommend Eagle Scouts who could lead circles around him. 

POTUS could also benefit from the experience of  private enterprise business leaders. He obviously is not getting it. He must not be hearing what business leaders tell him . If he is listening, he refuses to agree it is “Change He Can Believe  In.”  I truly think he will only listen to advisers who push his socialist program.

Two Barry’s

 

My Flag Flies Everyday

My Flag Flies Everyday

Have you ever heard of Barry? I’m not speaking of Barack “Barry” Obama, I speak of Barry Goldwater. Mr. Goldwater was a US Senator from Arizona in the nineteen sixties.  Goldwater was the most conservative Senator ever to be elected in the modern USA. His book “Conscience of a Conservative” was a best seller, and is considered to be the credo of the conservative political movement.

I learned of Barry Goldwater from a colleague at my first job out of college. My friend was also a recent college grad. He had become a staunch conservative after reading Senator Goldwater’s book. We spoke often of the Constitution and the principles of conservatism; love of God and country, small government, low taxes. We spoke of  the vision the founding fathers had for this new country. They had had it with a dictator king, and the unfair taxes imposed upon them. They were tired of the King deciding what was good for his subjects, and how to worship.  They wanted liberty to determine the course of their own lives. The idea of the king deciding for them was an atrocious concept.

The new citizens coming to the soil of North America were from many countries. They were immigrants. They fled their homelands in search of religious freedom. They came from England, Holland, France, Spain, and Germany. All across europe the citizens were unhappy with the way the kings ruled, and kept their subjects in abject poverty, while the aristocracy became fat.  The only way out was to revolt, or to leave. Many revolted, others left. The ones that left formed the greatest country in the world. The ones that revolted, suffered at the expense of the kings. Eventually, European countries backed away from monarchial rule and formed governments ruled by the people. Many kept thier monarchies as figure heads of the past.

One of the largest revolutions occurred in Russia. Lenin and Stalin imposed an even greater evil upon the people in the form of socialism. Yes, they forced the country from a monarchy into collective socialism.  They made it happen by slaughtering millions of good Russian people. Along came another great idealist. His name was Hitler. He decided that the people of Germany needed a change. The German people were sick of being ruled by the Kaiser. Hitler wanted the people to have socialism. He wanted it so much that he went to war over it. He wanted to convert all of Europe to his style of socialism, even Russia.

By this time the little country formed by immigrants from all of these countries had to step in and stop the mayhem. It was called World War Two. The USA, founded on the principles of a belief in God, and Liberty, had to become the salvation of the western world. The USA beat Hitler at a huge cost of blood and lives. Instead of challenging Russia, we made them allies in order to defeat Hitler.  Eventually, Ronald Reagan beat communism in the nineteen eighties. The great Soviet Union went broke trying to convert the world to socialism at the expense of their people.

Now we have a new “Barry.” He is Barack “Barry” Obama. This man should know better having been educated in the best schools in the USA. Like Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler, he too espouses the concept of “socialism.” He hasn’t learned from history that socialism,  and a welfare state is a failure. Instead, he insists on changing our great country into a socialist state as fast as he can.  He has used the economic meltdown as a shield to force congress to pass legislation that will create  government so huge it will self destruct.

 It may be my warped mind, but all I  can think is that the subjects of  history, and political science are being slanted  by socialist leaning liberal college tenures. In the fifty years since Barry Goldwater wrote his conservative credo, our scholastic instituions have created several generations socialist leaning  people. At the same time, our government, in all of its benevolence, has done an outstanding job of creating a population of uneducated welfare recipients.

The result is that Barry Obama is leading the citizenry of the USA,  with an army of socialist college grads, and welfare dependents toward atheism, and total  government subjugation under the manifesto of “Change We Can Believe In.”.

When will we wake up and understand that we are being led down the path toward a new era of modern slavery?

Take Vitamins and Live Healthy

My Flag Flies Everyday

My Flag Flies Everyday

Life continues to teach lessons to the end. I confess that I am three score and ten in years, but I am still learning everyday. Just this week I learned something new. Since I try to be a positive person, I look for the positive that comes out of a negative. Last week I received a call from a loan company telling me that I was fourteen days past due on a loan payment. The loan company is a government backed organization similar to Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.  For once they were correct about my late payment. They did me a favor by calling to remind me of the oversight. I told them I would send them money immediately. At the same time, I completed a form requesting a direct debit from my checking account to prevent the problem from occurring again. On Thursday, I rushed to the Post Office to send the check and the request.  I wanted the check to get there fast so I chose to send it by “Express Mail.” It cost $17.65 to send the money this way. It was guaranteed to be in their hands within twenty four hours.  At the same time, I mailed my request for direct debit by certified first class mail; the cost was $2.65.

My experience with the US Postal Service has been fair. I always trust them and expect my mail to get through. I remember as a kid that the mailman came to the house twice a day. We had a morning and an afternoon delivery to the front door. Currently, I have to walk to the curb to pick up my mail and I’m lucky if it comes sometime between nine and four. The service is now threatening to cut service to five days a week down from six. I still expect them to perform as faithful servants of the people by getting the mail through.

Today, I received a letter from the loan company telling me that I was in arrears. I decided I had better check on the status of my payment. I enterred the tracking number into the USPS website and got a surprise. The payment arrived at the loan company on Saturday afternoon, not on Friday as planned. There was no one at the office to receive the mail and sign for it. The USPS left them a form indicating they have special mail and they should make arrangements for a redelivery to occur. It is Monday and the payment is still late.

I was furious and called the local PO. A nice lady explained the process to me. Yes they were late with the delivery. I had no recourse except to hope  the loan company will request a redelivery. I asked her if I can claim a rebate for the $17.65 . “Yes,” she said, but you have to wait until the item is delivered to make a claim. Then I have to prove to the local PO that it was late.

Later this evening, I checked the USPS site again and learned that the item was delivered at 10:00 a.m. ten this morning. The second item sent to the same place by snail mail arrived at  8:39 a.m.

All of this got me to thinking about our  desire to make “Change We Can Believe In.” The latest direction is to nationalize health care. The idea that we will screw up our health care system by giving it to the government is insane. The USPS has had two hundred years to get it right, and they continue to erode their service. Their employees are indifferent to their performance, and are generally unhelpful. Can you imagine what it will be like trying to get cured using the bureocracy? I suggest we all take vitamins and live healthy, because getting help will be like expecting the post office to deliver a piece of mail on time.