The Gothic Revival Tribune Tower in Chicago (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
A good friend of mine sent me a copy of a letter he and his wife wrote to the Editor of the Chicago Tribune. When I was young, I considered the Tribune a top class news source with a Conservative bent. My how they have changed. When my friend told me that they had endorsed Obama I too, said good-bye to them as my source of news.
What the heck do they see in this guy I do not know, but I have a theory? Several of their columnists are über liberal. One, Clarence Page is as radical as they come. Call me a racist, but the Tribune is bending to the majority readership in Chicago. A large percentage of Chicago Tribune readers are black, Obama is black. Therefore the Tribune endorses Obama. It is the Progressive thing to do irregardless of how damaging it will be to America.
For the last 50 years, the Tribune has kept my wife and me informed, provided interesting articles by knowledgeable columnists and has written fair and balanced editorials.
Now we look at the lack of news coverage by the Tribune on the unfolding details of the terrorist attack on our Embassy in Benghazi and the murder of our Ambassador and the other three brave men in the service of our country. Clearly, the Obama Administration has not told the American public the full truth!
The Tribune has joined the ranks of the liberal media with their biased reporting against Gov. Romney through negative innuendo and distortion of the facts.
On Sunday, the Tribune endorsed for re-election the worst President in 80 years! Obama failed to keep almost all of his campaign promises. He has passed Obama care, Dodd-Frank and many regulations that have cost us jobs and will continue to cost more jobs. Obama’s reckless spending and Trillion Dollar deficits puts our nation on the road to DISASTER.
We cannot afford four more years of Obama’s failed Economic and Foreign Policies and his inability to work across the aisle to solve the many problems that face our Nation.
The Tribune has lost our VOTE OF CONFIDENCE. Therefore, we will find other news sources that we can trust.
I went to the Tribune website today and found that the Glorious Gardens contest is open for voting. I spent an hour rating photos, and came across only one picture of my garden. If you go to vote, the pictures will appear randomly, and you have to rate each one from 1(lousy) through 10(fabulous,) before they let you go to the next picture. None of the pictures are identified by owner. There are so many beautiful gardens it is hard to pick a good one. Many of the photos are presented multiple times. My guess is that the winner will be amongst the first 50 photos presented because only entrants will have the patience to go through all of the photos. I’m not sure if I saw all of the pictures. The website does not tell you how many pictures you have to review, or where you are in the process.
I learned alot about what kind of picture to present next year. It seems my idea of what they want, and what I gave them are the opposite. I love close up flower photography, they look for overall views. Next year, I’ll rent a helicopter and hover over the yard to take a good photo.
Instead of voting for my garden at the Glorious Gardens website, vote by leaving a comment below. Give a rating from 1 (lousy) to 10 (fabulous), or any number between. OOHs and AAHs will be appreciated. I’ve added a few new pictures below to base your rating on. Others are sprinkled throughout my posts, Vote for my Garden Please, and on my Gardener page.
I have never enterred a contest before today. The Chicago Tribune is co-sponsoring a contest called “Glorious Gardens,” with Home Depot. An entrant is allowed to place five photos into the competition. I uploaded five. Today was the deadline for doing so. Beginning tomorrow, June 27, 2009, you can go to the Chicago Tribune Website and vote for my garden.
(Edited 3 August 2009)—-I went tothe Tribune site today and found out that the glorious gardens contest is opn for voting. I spent an hour rating photos, and only came across one picture of my garden. If you go to vote, the pictures will appear randomly and you have to give each one a rating from 1 through 10 to go to the next picture. There are so many beautiful gardens it is hard to pick a really good one. Many of the photos were presented multiple times.
(Edited….July 25, 2009—-I am sorry, but the Trib is not conducting a popular vote for the most glorious garden. I was wrong to ask you to vote. Sorry for any confusion this caused you.)
Since, I’m not a machine politician, I can only offer you my ‘thanks’ for voting. I’m proud of the garden and I love taking pictures at different times of the day. I call it the ‘Monet Vision.’ The goal is to create a horticultural scene of magnificent complimentary colors. I have a long way to go, but I’m on my way. Hopefully, the image I see in my mind will be realized in the backyard. That is, if Bambi doesn’t decide to taste all of the new entries like he has been this year.
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.
The more I think about socialism, the more I realize how far away from “living” socialism the proponents are. As I understand socialism, we are all to be equalized so we all have the same opportunities. I clipped a segment out of the Wikipedia Dictionary defining socialism for you to read here:
“Socialists mainly share the belief that capitalism unfairly concentrates power and wealth among a small segment of society that controls capital, creates an unequal society, and does not provide equal opportunities for everyone in society. Therefore socialists advocate the creation of a society in which wealth and power are distributed more evenly based on the amount of work expended in production, although there is considerable disagreement among socialists over how, and to what extent this could be achieved.”
I see a hypocrisy in both the “power and wealth” part of their dictates. If those who move us toward socialism, were truly living the philosophy to the spirit of the ideology, they would have the same power and wealth as the rest of us. That is not the case. The Chicago Tribune had an article today(http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/obama/chi-white-house-wealthapr09,0,1573304.story) exposing the salaries and personal fortunes of Obama’s advisers. I won’t go into it deeply, but David Axlerod made one and a half million dollars of salary last year. I’m sure that is more money than you will earn in a lifetime much less a year. In my book, that is not showing good example for the rest of us to follow the path toward equalism. They should all be making the same mediocre salary that the rest of us make.
The same holds true for power also. If power was to be equalized, all of us could be president without spending seven hundred and fifty million dollars to win an election. Where is the equality in that? Most of us cannot afford a new car much less run a campaign.
I have a new idea for POTUS. He likes new untried ideas, that is why he won’t listen to Republicans, because they have “tired old ideas that don’t work.”
In the interest of moving toward socialism, as POTUS is doing, we must do something really radical. To start with let us TRASH the United States Constitution.” It has too many rules on elections that have failed to produce representatives who listen to their constituents. Instead, we must replace the election system with a National Representative Lottery. It’s a simple idea, and most simple ideas work pretty good. Everyone who is born in this country is registered at birth, and when he reaches age, his name is activated in the lottery. When it is time to change representatives, names are drawn for each open position. This system works best if there are term limits attached to each position. The same system is used for selecting candidates to serve in the Armed Services.
Think of the money that will be saved. A candidate such as Obama will not have to solicit and spend 750 million dollars to reach his goal. In fact, since we are all equal under this “New Socialist System,” there won’t be any goals to stretch for. We won’t have differences in intelligence either. After all, we all get the same mediocre equal education, and receive the same equally mediocre grades. Since each and every representative is equal to every other representative, there will be no need to debate or argue about bills. The result would be even more savings as Representative staffs are no longer required. Lobbyists disappear too because Lottery selected Representatives don’t want money to go into a campaign fund. That is because under “New Socialism,” campaign funds are considered the same as a bonus, and taxed 100 percent. A Representative found to accept a bribe or a gift from a lobbyist is hanged in the Capitol Rotunda without a speedy trial.
We all save time because we don’t have to vote. We don’t have to listen to all the stupid negative campaign speeches either. On the day after National Representative Lottery Day, winners receive a certified letter from the Representative Lottery Computer to report for service. No need to be sworn in since the oath to uphold the constitution is gone. Another saving comes because we don’t have all the frivolous inauguration parties and parades to put on.
Both the republican and democratic parties can be abolished, thus saving millions of dollars in salaries and wasted effort. Campaigns are a thing of the past. The computer solves all of the problems of the vote counting by selecting leaders randomly, and quickly.
All these savings mean there is more money in the pot to spread the wealth. Hell, we could get so wealthy that the word “poor” will be erased from the Wikipedia library.
I keep hearing about how all the socialist systems in the world fail. “They just don’t work,” say the pundits. The reason they fail, is that the leaders have more power than the peons. There is a huge imbalance in the system. The imbalance of power causes allot of dissension among peons. We all know that dissending peons wield a lot of power. POTUS recently warned bank leaders
“Be careful how you make those statements, gentlemen. The public isn’t buying that.”
“My administration,” the president added, “is the only thing between you and the pitchforks.”
In saying that, I take it to mean that he has empowered us to take matters into our ownhands to make the dream of true equality real.
In Old Socialism, the leaders live like the hated “fat cats of capitalism,” while the peons live equally. My “New Socialism,” plan eradicates that imbalance by selecting leaders totally at random by the lottery. They all serve specific terms, thereby not becoming dictators who sit in the ivory tower for life. No one has to be educated in an Ivy League School, and no one has to be an eloquent snake oil salesman.
” But Grumpa,” you ask, “the National Representative Lottery will not pick a person with experience who can go up against the leaders of the world’s evil countries?”
“If the Lottery winner fails. we merely ask the computer to select another candidate until we find an ass kisser who is acceptable to the rest of the world.”
In reality, my New Socialism plan is really not new, it is a tired old idea that I’ve improved so it will work.