# 111
“Kettles and Pots”
IN DEFENSE OF COMMON SENSE
By Hetty Gray
May 16, 2012
There is an old saying about “the kettle calling the pot black” and the near hysteria from administration spokespeople is a good example. These folks have the gall to decry J. P. Morgan Chase for its recent $2 billion-dollar loss, yet it fails to acknowledge the fact that it the federal government borrows that amount DAILY. Yes, we are up to our wazoo in debt and it’s getting deeper every hour.
The salient point here is that the bank expects to make over $10 billion yet this year. Now, a 20% loss is painful to the bank, but it is solvent. That’s more than we can say for the government! Kettle #1.
As we make our way into the deep weeds of media bias in this election cycle, remember just what has really happened in the halls of Congress for three years. The Senate has never passed a budget. The House has offered up bill after bill with substantive measures to decrease the national debt, cut spending and alter entitlements.
I hate the term “entitled”. It rings hollow. Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are out of money, folks. There are fewer and fewer workers paying into the government and more and more receiving checks. No entity can survive with this kind of tilted bookkeeping, yet every time someone waves the red flag that it’s time to do something the opposition screams starving children, seniors on dog food and women in reproductive peril.
What we “owe” is to pass on a viable working environment to the next generations. We aren’t doing that at all. Instead, we are writing checks to Middle Eastern potentates and dictators while sitting on our own vast reserves of oil and natural gas. All the bragging about “more drilling now” than in the past ten years fails to state that it is on private land. Federal land is off limits. Kettle #2.
With the economic catastrophe staring each one of us straight in the face, what does the current White House occupant banter about? His minions warn of a fictitious war on women and voice support for same sex marriage. It’s not as if women, gay men, and lesbians are the only ones with jobs. How many of them are unemployed or underemployed?
There are 340,000 fewer available jobs today than in January of 2009 and over 7 million more eligible workers vying for them. Sounds more like lottery odds than job searching, doesn’t it? Kettle #3.
You can’t spend your way out of a financial hole. It’s time to put some adults in the leadership roles. I am weary of name calling and searching back decades to find out if someone acted like a teenager when a teenager. What is important here is money — how we keep from squandering it, from whom we choose to borrow it, and the possibility of said borrowed funds being used as leverage against the nation as a whole. That is a real threat and few news outlets even choose to mention it.
Given the latest forms of communication and the decline of print media in all forms, we find ourselves immersed in a world of information that could disappear in the click of a hacker. Imagine, if you will, what would happen if no computers worked — even for a day or two.
The majority of retailers would be stymied. You can probably count on your fingers the number of clerks who have waited on you in the last year who were capable of making change. Schools that abandoned textbooks in favor of tablets and laptops would be between that proverbial rock and a hard place. Banking done on line would cease. Instant messaging would disappear and I shudder to fathom what would happen in the transportation industry. Since trains and planes rely on computers, you can scratch travel and shipping. Set aside cars and trucks. That would be a nightmare, too.
People would yearn for the days of hand-written receipts, old cash registers that opened when the TOTAL button or lever was engaged, and they would find themselves in a world that doesn’t work very well — if at all.
For every advance in technology, its malfunction bodes ill — and not just for Americans. Let’s hope that this election cycle includes a serious debate on the economy and a long-range plan for recovery. These problems didn’t surface in four years and four years won’t fix them, either.
America is great because its people have always worked — yes, worked! Job applicants just two generations ago didn’t ask about “quality time”. They had no conception of “family leave”. They wanted a job and were willing to come early, stay late and do more than the boss expected. When that attitude morphed into the attitude we see today, America began to slide.
The pride and sense of accomplishment that comes from a job well done should be the battle cry of the next team to lead this country. A hobbled horse cannot run. Take off the hobbling regulations that have defied common sense since the so-called “environmentalists” hit the scene.
If they had been alive and had their way when this nation was on the cusp of expansion, we would still be living east of the Appalachians and railroads would have been labeled as “destructive.”
I’m not sure of your opinion, but I remain convinced that people come first. All those morons who call an end to clean coal would change their tune abruptly if the coal-fired power plants would shut down their juice to all but essential facilities — hospitals, etc.
Oh, they scream at what others should and should not do, and they climb into their corporate jets and settle down onto a stool with a cold one and laugh at the lot of us — calling us names in the bargain.
We here in Indiana benefit immensely from coal fired power plants. It’s about time we stood up for the coal industry. Do your own research. Clean coal is more than a term. It is real. Don’t let a bunch of well-funded naysayers destroy all the progress the coal industry has made over the years and imperil the future of generations unborn. Dismantling the power grid piece by piece without a dependable, cheap alternative is madness.
Remember that jobs and electricity are inseparable. Without subsidies, wind and solar wouldn’t be able to compete at all and WE pay those subsidies!!!
Jobs and a business-friendly environment are paramount for this nation. Every time laws clamp down on entrepreneurship and business innovation, jobs evaporate. We need a new generation of inventors and dreamers, not preventers and screamers.
Don’t rag on a bank that remains in the black and must recover from some bad decisions. Federal law enacted by Congress in 1933 forcing a separation between commercial banking and investment banking. This act, which required commercial banks to dispose of their securities affiliates, bears the same name as the Banking Act of 1933, and is part of the landmark 1933 act. Since then, the name Glass-Steagall has been more commonly used when referring to the four sections of the banking act (Sections 16, 20, 21, and 32) pertaining to underwriting and sale of securities.
This law met its end in 1999. That was a great way to start the new millennium, huh?
Many analysts point to this decision and link it to the 2008 bank crisis. No kidding? Turning bankers into bookies was not a good idea and then forcing banks to loan money to people who had no way to pay it back was even worse. Now we are all paying for it. The next newscaster or bureaucrat that bandies about more government regulation should set your hair on fire. Government needs to get the heck out of the way. Let the economic engine work without starving it for fuel. Kettle #4.
There are many more kettles out there today, but you get the point. Our Founding Fathers worried about overreaching government and now we see what it can do to us. It’s doing it right now— but we can turn it around. It happens one vote at a time. Think about it.