Tanstaafl

You may not be familiar with the title phrase. The first time I read it was in a scifi story by Robert Heinlein. It means there ain't no such thing as a free lunch.

Some people attribute the Tea Party movement and the anger in general over the policies of the Obama Administration to racism. More likely it's directed at people that don't realize the truth of tanstaafl. Whether it's Health care ,Mortgage relief, or Economic stimulus packages it come down to the same thing people wanting something for nothing. People talk about the free health care that the Canadians and Europeans have like it is truly free not realizing the tremendous tax burden they pay.

Today's Plain Dealer details the provisions of the new Mortgage relief plan. While not something for nothing it does reduce actual balances to make mortgage payments much lower. This really sets my blood to boiling you see I like a bargain as well as the next guy but I don't expect my neighbor to finance my bargain.

Even the Stimulus follows this idea of wanting something for nothing. big banks and insurance companies took the rewards and want me to cover the risks. The unions and G.M. and Chrysler negotiated unsustainable contracts for decades living high on the hog (us). Now we own at least part of these auto makers to bad they are no longer worth anything.

You see this is the cause for anger serious problems don't call for living in fantasy land.

Fitness

Generally when I choose to workout on the elliptical machine at home instead of running outside I listen to music. I find hard driving music helps to give me a better pace. Using cds it also gives me rest periods when a slower song will come on. Some of my favorites to workout to are the Beatles, Squeeze,ELO, and basically any 70's to early 80's rock.

However I never listen to music when I run out doors. This decision was confirmed by a story out of Hilton Head S.C. A jogger running on the beach listening to his IPod was killed when he was hit by a plane making an emergency landing.

Haiku #19 St. Patrick's day

Putting on my green
Heritage remembered
Drink a pint or two

President Obama comes to Strongsville

Luckily I still have a job and I am working steadily. However work precluded me from going to Obama's healthcare rally and hearing what he had to say. There were 1200 tickets available for the rally. It was set up so you just went to the event site on Sunday and asked for a ticket and you could attend. It turns out it didn't really matter that I had to work odds were against me or anyone getting a ticket. You see there were really according to local radio host Mike Trivisono only 200 tickets available the rest were given to local Democrats to give to party loyalists.

This is why politicians are so distrusted they can't even tell the truth about event planning. If this health care reform is so good it should be able to stand up to the scrutiny of the people. Sadly it obviously has flaws that our leaders see fit to try to hide from their constituency, Us.

Census

This is why everything the government does is expensive. Yesterday I received an envelope from the census bureau. When I opened it there was a letter telling me that in a couple of days they would send me another mailing with the actual census forms. So our government decided to send two mailings to each address.

This doesn't seem very smart to me. Of course the post office is hurting maybe this is another stimulus package.

Picking winners

You might think I'm writing about horse races or basketball games you'd be wrong. In Ohio we have a commission PUCO that oversees utility rates. Approximately 100,000 families have complained to PUCO the Governor and anyone else that would listen about their increased electric bills. The electric company had removed a long standing discount given to all electric homes this was initially approved by PUCO. Well three cheers PUCO says the electric company has to reinstate the discount.

So what is the Electric companies solution. Their going to try for a rate increase on the rest of us. Personally I object to buying someone elses electricity.

Government's job is to set certain standards and laws so that we might function with as little friction as possible. Their job is NOT to pick winners and losers. When regulations are put in place that allows one customer to pay one price and another customer a second price we are letting them pick the winners.