Those of you that know me know I am upbeat, optimistic and love to encourage people to be better than they themselves think they can be. However, I really messed up a great day by watching the Subcommittee hearings on CSPAN of the GSA wasteful spending debacle and got to tell you I became so angry I wanted literally to throw up. I think not enough Americans have hit that magic sweet spot of being absolutely disgusted with the rancor, the cheating, the fraud, the abuse of taxpayer money, the ineptitude of our political leadership, the poison that continues unabated on Wall Street.
As I began to write this it was announced that Citibank shareholders voted down a $15,000,000 BONUS to CEO; a recipient of TARP funds just three years ago. Almost daily we see snippets of banks issuing credits cards, banks that received TARP taxpayer money, increasing fees, inventing new fees aimed at an already debt laden drowning American public.
I want sooooooo badly to write about the sun coming up, the great inventions, the wins, the joys of this wonderful thing called life but then find myself literally absorbed with the cesspool swirling around us and you pick the Party. I have just listened to on CSPAN a long debate about Post Office closures and learned, not surprisingly, of no layoff clauses in union contracts, payment for non work, guarantees of not being moved to a new location and who runs the Post Office? The same people that run Amtrak that is well underwater. So the solution posed today? We must save the post offices irrespective of the fact that 80%+ of hard mail is not junk mail, overall volume of mail deliver is down nearly fifty percent and the Senate are throwing arrows at each other at even the thought of closing post offices, laying off postal workers that are obviously not needed by we the taxpayers, stopping mail delivery on Saturday because Uncle Fred will miss his Saturday newspaper on Saturday morning, etc, etc.!
My anger is energized from working my professional life in tire manufacturing where every thing you did, every action taken, every person hired was weighed on the balance of adding cost to the making of the tire and if it did, you did not do it; it was really just that simple! So when I see boldfaced the waste of our monies, the binding of management's wrist by union contracts impeding doing whatever is necessary to bring efficiencies to a defunct system, and it is, I simply want to kick a tree really, really hard.
The greatness of America has always resided in doing right things right and in find efficiencies as Mr. Adam Smith, the Father of the Free Enterprise espoused into our very national doctrine in the 1700s. Our greatness has been in find a better way, pioneering new paths, pushing the envelop but it seems to me we have grown lethargic, accepting and frankly, quite lazy in seeking the tough, stony paths! I preach endlessly to my students to make themselves better, push themselves, get out of Canton, OH, work out of this country, experience this world. You should Google Plato's Cave and spend sometime there. We are trapped as a nation in that cave and do not wish to venture out to seek a new reality. Therefore, we reside in that cave, pine and whine about the shadows which are what I outline above; sadly, this has become our reality.
I long to see some of my students make the tough decision to venture out of this Cave, make a difference, create a new path and others will follow! Like my signature block on my email states ... STAY IN THE FIGHT but that means initiating combat against the status quo. Somebody once told me, if you do not stand for something you will fall for anything. I think that a most appropriate adage in light of the shadows in your Cave. So, what do you stand for? Because another adage that applies, if you do what you have always done you will get what you have always gotten .... not liking what we are getting, are you?
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