“$1,000,000,000,000.00 Like It’s Chump Change”

Posted on 20/03/2009 by Grumpa Joe
My Flag Flies Everyday

My Flag Flies Everyday

We hear an awful lot of commentary these days about the stimulus bill, the budget, the Porkulus Bill, on and on. Each time we hear the amount of money being spent, politicians and commentators alike bandy about the phrase “a trillion dollars,” like it is pocket change. The number, one trillion, continues to fascinate me. Probably, because  in my mind that number is so large, and unreal I cannot mentally process the information.  

It has taken me fifty five years to accumulate a nest egg large enough to feel comfortable with. In spite of the nest egg, I still have to rely on Social Security to make ends meet.  The egg became scrambled in three short months, and my fifty five years of hard work went down the drain. I must now consider returning to the working population.

My dilemma is this; I spent fifty five years working in a number oriented business, if I can’t process the number, one trillion, how in the world can a bunch of lawyers elected to congress do it? They can’t. They have no clue as to what is happening to their constituents. If they did, they would have done the right thing, and voted the  trillion dollar packages into the toilet where they belong. They would also impeach the president and his cabinet as being incompetent.

As an excercise to get an understanding of what a trillion dollars is, I made a spread sheet to calculate how long it will take to pay off a trillion dollar debt. The numbers are too large to show the entire spreadsheet on this page.

      years to pay off debt
           
debt in trillions   1 2 3 4
payback rate          
1 Million per day   2,740 5,479 8,219 10,959
1 Million per hour   114 228 342 457
100 Million per day   27 55 82 110
1 Billion per day   3 5 8 11
1 Billion per hour   0 0 0 0

My three year old  grandchild will be thirty years old if we pay back one trillion dollars of deficit at a rate of one billion dollars per day, and not spend another dime along the way. We don’t have one trillion dollars of deficit, we have ten,  and it continues to grow exponentially. Only the fat cats in congress will survive.  

 Send the tea bag, vote them out of office, do what it takes to get the lazy bastards out of office. Elect some people who are real citizens, and  who care about the country, and its people. If we don’t take radical action now to stop  “Change We Can Believe In,” only the fats cats will survive. The rest of us will spend the rest of our lives waiting in lines to get a roll of toilet paper.

Filed under: conservatives, economy, Election, family, Government, politics, Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Did Obama Change Altgeld Gardens?

Posted on 29/10/2008 by Grumpa Joe
My Flag Flies Everyday

My Flag Flies Everyday

Altgeld Gardens is a housing project in the Chicago area. It has been home to many poor black people for many years. Barack Obama writes about the “Gardens” in “Dreams From My Father.” He describes it as a project that was built in the middle of a cess pool. Granted there  is a sewage treatment plant immediately to the north of it, and polluted Lake Calumet to the Northeast. The lake is also a huge landfill. I grew up in a neighborhood called “Burnside” about three miles to the north of Altgeld Gardens. I learned of the place while I was in high school during the nineteen fifties. Barack arrived there after he finished college in the eighties. It was his first assignment as a community organizer.

When Altgeld Gardens was built, the area was rural. Lake Calumet was not polluted. People went to the lake for boating and to fish. A man from my neighborhood kept his seaplane there. He gave people rides for a fee. The neighborhoods in every direction from Altgeld Gardens were filled with industry. Immediately to the West was Acme Steel, to the North it was the Ford Assembly plant (still there). Sherwin Williams paint company was a short distance to the South. The towns of Riverdale, Harvey, Blue Island, all within a short bus ride were teeming with industry. The Southeast side of Chicago had steel mills lined up end to end along the shores of Lake Michigan. My point is that the Gardens were situated in a nice rural area located centrally between an abundance of jobs. The perfect location for low income housing.

Between the time, I learned of the Gardens and the time Barack went there to work, many things happened. Much of it was created by the Chicago Machine in the name of progress. Lake Calumet became a part of the Saint Lawrence Seaway. It needed to be filled in order to make a deep channel harbor. Coincidentally, Chicago needed a place to dispose of it’s garbage. The machine built a huge incinerator a couple of miles from Altgeld, on the edge of Lake Calumet. It spewed out tons of toxic smoke, and was shut down for environmental reasons. The incinerator property became a landfill. Chicago was growing and needed larger sewage treatment facilities. Again, the Chicago Metropolitan Sanitary District built a new one near Altgeld  Gardens. The steel mills closed because of competition from Korea, and Japan. The same thing happened with much of the industry in the towns around Altgeld Gardens. The people who were satisfied working at jobs that didn’t require schooling  remained, and became dependent. 

The reason I speak of this, is that Barack Obama painted a picture of Altgeld gardens as a place that was deliberately sited in the middle of all these polluted facilities. He makes it sound like the people of Altgeld Gardens were placed there by the whites to get them out of the way. The bottom line is that the people, for what ever reason, chose to stand put when the jobs left. Many of them chose not to educate themselves to take on new jobs. I’m sure the smart ones did leave toward new work. The empty apartments of Altgeld were filled by people who were less ambitious. 

If Barack Obama was truly interested in effecting change that “I can Believe In,” he should have worked with the Chicago political machine to change things at Altgeld Gardens. He had opportunity to do so after his law degree. Instead he chose to affiliate himself with some questionable people. He had even more opportunity to change things at Altgeld after he became State Senator. He couldn’t effect change in a neighborhood, but he wants to change the best country in the world.

BO wants to make “Change We Can Believe In” by redistributing the wealth of fat cats to those who are less fortunate, like the people of Altgeld Gardens. He will give them a cash handout. Will a small cash handout  really change the lives of these unfortunate people? Will it appease three hundred years of oppression? Will it change the attitude a white man has of a black or vice versa? Will it build his self esteem? Will it make him more responsible? Will it buy him an education that is better than the free one he currently scorns?

 I don’t think so.

Filed under: Election, family, Funk, Garden, grief, Memories, Motivation, politics, Travel, Uncategorized, Writer | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments »

Conflicted Soul

Posted on 27/10/2008 by Grumpa Joe

I finally broke down and began reading BO’s life story “Dreams From My Father.” The one thing that becomes very clear to me is that this man has had a very troubled early life. The fact that his mother is white and his father black screwed him up big time. He was raised white, but his soul was black. He wanted to be black.  His mother would have done him a big favor by following the father back to Kenya. His writings are filled with inner turmoil caused by his own belief that he was being rejected by whites. He saw the color attitude throught the eyes of his black classmates. He didn’t see the race difference because his mother and grandparents were white and sheltered him. When he finally learned of his grandmother’s concern about being stalked by a black man he was stunned at her reaction.

BO sought out people throughout his high school years that made him feel normal. Among them a black poet who was a freind of his grandfather’s. The poet, whose name was Frank, was a communist. Throughout high school and his early college days, BO leaned heavily toward the racist poetry of Malcolm X and Marxist teachings.

No doubt, some of this turmoil was brought on by his upbringing in Indonesia. His mother’s second husband  brought them to this country when it was in the aftermath of the overthrow of dictator Sukarno. He witnessed lots of unpleasant things, lots of poverty, lots of turmoil between his mother and her husband. Throughout his life, his black father kept in touch with him and constantly fed him a line about his black heritage and family in Kenya.

BO’s thinking was definitely shaped by inner struggles between his white and black self. His early goal to become an organizer after college pointed at his need to “change” things from the bottom up: it’s his message today.

The man carries a package of guilt about his race. He is clearly a racist, his father was also a racist. His affiliations with Jerimiah Wright, Louis Farakhan, Frank the poet, Ayres, are all the result of this guilt. It is my opinion that he is where he is today because he feels superior to the white race, and would like to punish whites in order to relieve his inner turmoil.  

Is this the kind of conflicted soul we want to lead us?

Filed under: Election, family, Funk, grief, Memories, Motivation, politics, Travel, Uncategorized, Writer | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

He Scares the Hell Out of Me!

Posted on 14/05/2008 by Grumpa Joe

Grumpa Joe Looks at FlowerMaybe it is just me, but I think there is a problem with one of the candidates running for the presidential nomination. I normally don’t get involved in political discussions like I am venturing to do now because I get too emotional. My logic fails me when I get emotional, and I will lose any debate I get into. The end result is that I know not to debate.

Last night I attended my Lions Club meeting. There were twenty five people in attendance. Their ages range from 30 to 75. I must confess there are more older members than younger ones. We open the meeting the same way each month. The Lion President calls upon Lion Tony to begin the pledge of allegiance to the flag. Last night, I looked around the room as we pledged. All of us had a hand over our heart as we stood facing the stars and stripes. All recited the pledge with reverence. Every single one of us had the right hand over the heart.  So what, you say, we all pledge that way. It is the way we were taught in school. That is right. If you went to school in this country. If  you are my age, you also learned to pray, to say the pledge, and you learned to respect the military. That is because kids my age grew up watching a world war. The friends of our parents, or in some cases our parents, were in the war. We were all affected. Even as children we felt the effect of rationing, and the continuous requests to buy  war bonds. Yes, we were asked to buy war bonds in school. We saved our money proudly, because it was helping our country fight a war against a dictator with a very evil belief.

Our country was isolationist before WWII. Our citizens did not want to get involved. Let the Europeans fight their own war we said. Ultimately our President got involved because a strong ally asked for help. The US agreed to build war materials for the allies. Later, we got involved again when we declared war on Japan, after they bombed our ships in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. That got us were really involved. I digress. All I’m trying to say is that I grew being taught to be patriotic. I am still patriotic. I fly the stars and stripes over my  home everyday of the year. So it really bugs me when a major candidate for the highest office in the land is caught on film with his hands folded in front of him while a number of his opponents are all pledging the allegiance with hands over the heart.

Did he ignore this simple sign of respect because he wasn’t schooled in the US? Is it because he is un-patriotic? What? The rest of us perform this simple act of love automatically when we proudly pledge our allegiance to the flag of America. I ask you, can you vote a person who cannot show a basic simple sign of love and respect for his country into the highest office of the land?

Another thing that bugs me about this candidate is his slogan, “Change You Can Believe In.” Just what kind of change is he planning to bring about? Is he planning to teach us all that the star and stripes do not deserve respect? Is he planning to change the Constituion to take away our current form of government? Just what is the “Change You Can Believe In?”

Quite frankly, this candidate scares the hell out of me.

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