Another Week Of Being A Malcontent

Storm hits and the BOS and DPW do a Casper The Ghost and disappear. The trash tax in play. $208 well spent. The usual pronouncement of manpower issues will prevent the additional pick-ups that may be necessary and how many other communities have managed to at least do something?

On Tuesday after the storm my running partner and I were cruising down to Eastover Farm for a run when we came across a convoy in Rochester complete with a wood chipper and front end loader. This was Marion Road and they were loading up the fallen wood including batches left out front by residents. Now just maybe this was something they were not suppose to do but did. Their primary objective was to insure that this roadway also had no obstacles left by the storm or was it just that in conjunction with providing service? On the way back to our usual stop at 7/11 we came across two Wareham DPW trucks doing similar activities. Guess other towns can cope with a “manpower shortage.”

Seems like Middleboro has decided to figure out ways of not doing things rather than doing them.

National Labor Relations Board is now going to require employers to have posters in the workplace describing the employees right to unionize. Wonder if they cleared this with Pacheco?

Huntsman. Perry. Bachmann. Romney. What a crew the Republicans have to fight it out for the nomination.

Martin Hanley and Charlie Lincoln appear to have a lot in common.

Probably the only thing more dysfunctional than my blog is Social Security. Rick Perry hammered away at this scheme during the Republican debate of which I saw an excerpt. Think I would actually watch that nonsense? I have been an advocate for partial dismantling of this system for decades and just maybe some in the political mainstream will finally do something about a program that makes Bernie Madoff look like a fiscal Mother Theresa.

The Obama latest stimulus is a mixture of little bits and pieces from proposals of both Republicans and Democrats so the term would be “nothing new here, folks, just move along.” The first stimulus was about twice as large and under its guidance unemployment went from 7.6 to 9+%. This one should bag us the coveted 10% plateau.

I am a Keiko supporter. My support is based entirely on two things. First is her fiscal positions and the second is the huge influx of union dollars for her opponent.

The infiltration of the Republican Party by overly religious elements disturbs me as much as the public employee union ties of the Democrats. I have often called myself a “political bisexual” in that I can go either party or none. I’m finding none becoming all to attractive lately.

When is enough enough? In Afghanistan our presence is about as valued as that woodchuck is in our garden. Simply put they hate us. They hate our government. They hate our religion. They hate our money. Well…maybe not the money since they seem to be putting that to good personal use. I just can’t see any value to our continuing to nest in that country, I thought “The Big Zero” would have had us out the door by now but he is also buying into that famed “Strategic withdrawal” mantra that the military experts continue to espouse.

Football season is about to start which means a goodly portion of the female population will be without male companionship for five months. Six if your team is in the playoffs. Then there is Fantasy Football which also requires huge blocks of time. Have fun, ladies.

Sal DiMasi is going to the federal can. Is that three or four speakers in a row? Easy to lose count.

What do police do? Proposals are put forward to get more “on the street.” Why? Well how about an outdated and failed policy on all levels to deal with drugs. Simple as that. More cops to address an issue that needs a different perspective. It is fiscally attractive to sell. To buy you need enormous sums of money and an easy way to acquire it is via grabbing it from someone else. We really need a controlled substance to be controlled, taxed, regulated and enforcement for serious violations such as we have under DUI’s. What we do now has not worked. It never will work.

Our drug policies have not only impacted our country but others. Mexico is in a shambles and much of it is because of pitched battles between drug cartels. The same applies to Columbia. Many others countries are also in the mix.

The DARE program was a total disaster. It did nothing and there is enough hard evidence to show that.

Obama’s proposals had an interesting impact on financial markets - they lost big time.

I had a recent meeting and espoused a position that has always done me well. I always examine the negative first. I always consider what can absolutely go wrong and assume it will. I first started to employ this mechanism as a baseball fan but found it did wonders in everything from purchasing items to buying/selling stocks. Perfect? Certainly not but it is always better to embrace the positive after you have fully examined in detail the negative.