2/26/2010

Legislators Gone Wild

As someone who watches late night TV, I see the "Girls Gone Wild" advertisements as I surf through the channels for something worth watching. With DirecTV, that often means over 100 channels up or down the dial to get something more entertaining than get skinny in 90 days or offers to see young girls jumping up and down on a bed is more or less clothes. I am currently at a point in my life where I see the national and State Congress look like they want to try to appeal to my desires by promising to give us everything we need and most of what we want.

A couple of years ago during one of the hottest streaks in our economy, the Supreme Court here in Kansas hog tie the State Congress and make them promise to give the schools more State Aid for Education. Did it matter that we were 38th in funding and about 38th in Population? Nope, give them the money, honey. Now that the shoe's on the other foot and things have slowed down, the Supreme Court of Kansas is not touching the entire mess with a 10 foot pole.

The latest move that makes little sense is the Statewide ban on smoking. For some reason the have exempted their State Run casino's from the ban. If it isn't fodder for the Goose, then why are we making the gander go outside to smoke? Surely someone out there in the great wide world can come up with an air handling system that provides an area inside the casino for smokers and and a separate area for non smokers. To me it is simple if the problem is addressed at the building level. Have a bar in a closed off area and allow people go there to drink coffee or mixed drinks with their cigarettes. The same applies to break rooms with a separate air handling unit that exhausts smoke outside. I know that paint booths that use toxic paint vent outside and some welding areas do in businesses.

I am aware that there are a lot of people that for a wide assortment of reasons don't have coverage for medical care. One of the ads indicated that we need to pass a bill so grandma can get new teeth. Hell, I don't have dental or glasses covered by my medical insurance. I do them the old fashion way, I pay for it. Those people in Kansas that can't are eligible for Medicaid and the State pays for most of it.

Let me aim this ending at the real problem as I see it. Too many people think that we will be given everything we can ever need by the Government and jump up and down on the bed shouting how great it will all be. The Government was never intended to fix our personal problems and in the history of the world, no government has ever achieved that utopia. To provide us with more and more, they will grow the bureaucracy and the taxes to do so. At some time we will all work for the Government and it will be so big that the Government will be forced to take what it needs from those of us that worked so hard to build up what we have so we can live like we planned.

MUD

3 comments:

  1. Boy, that is one thing I certainly do not miss by not having satellite and getting everything through Netflix or the computer. I'll never fall asleep on the couch and wake up to Jerry Springer or Girls Gone Wild again.

    As a non-smoker, I appreciate that more and more public places are becoming smoke free. My mom smoked all the time I was growing up and I hated driving to school with her in the winter when either the window was down and I was cold or the window was up and I was suffocating from the smoke. After living in a smoke-free home, I realized how I must have smelled and how our walls and everything in our home was stained with that nicotine. I appreciate breathing clean air and not being subjected to someone else's habit when I go into a public place. That said, I do think it should be up to business owners to determine what will best suit their clientele and act accordingly, even if that means keeping the bar smokey. For the most part, I can avoid those places that are very smokey. I do think it's an imposition to require business owners to have special air filtration systems for smokers. I think either they should be free to choose whether they will cater to smokers, non-smokers, or both. Smoking is not a necessity and employees and customers alike can wait to smoke if they are in a no-smoking zone.

    I agree whole-heartedly with your last two paragraphs.

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  2. Thanks for the good common sense, MUD.

    Hopefully, after the government determines everything that we can and cannot do in our individual lives, they will quit messing with us and go off into the woods to die a slow and agonizing death. Then maybe the sanity can resume.

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  3. It was always an amazing thing to watch the idiots in Topeka. And now I have the idiots in Sacramento. Out of the frying pan and into the fire. At least I am working and a larger burden on the taxpayer.
    I will be getting Direct TV installed tomorrow. The cable outfit here in California City, Boron, Edwards and Mojave pretty much sucks bilge water up the you know what.
    As always MUD, insightful and spot on.

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