Walking around on Resurrection ground
May 28, 2014 Leave a comment
No comments required from me other than to say that at the end of the speech Reagan signs a bill to promote Women’s Businesses.
President Reagan’s Remarks at the National Conference of the National Federation of Independent Business on June 22, 1983
September 2, 2013 Leave a comment
Labor Day. I decide to go to one of my favorite breakfast places to indulge in some eggs over easy with ham.
The Nosh staff knows me by name except for Erika. Erika waited on me once before and things didn’t work out too well.
Now I tend to order one of two different items. The waitresses who have waited on me before come over with the coffee pot – ready to pour and take my order
My food and more coffee arrive in minutes. They make sure that my coffee cup stays full. They ask me several times if I’m doing OK. But that is not what happened with Erika the first time she served me.
Erika asked if I wanted coffee and I smiled and gave the nod “yes.” She came back with coffee and took my order. The restaurant manager brought my breakfast and some Cholula hot sauce. He knows me.
I drank me coffee until there was none. And there was no Erika either.
Now the restaurant wasn’t completely full and there were several waitresses but Erika was no where in sight. Lots of time passed before she arrived in view across the way. She stood at the computer tallying some orders and then went and checked on every new table she was given. This happened several times over and now I was a little upset. This wasn’t a hard job. She just didn’t seem to be aware of her surroundings or her customer’s needs.
Getting out of my seat I finally waved her down as she about to walk right past me. She asked, “More coffee?” I said “Yes!”
Once again I had a few sips of warm coffee and finished my breakfast. But again no Erika in sight to ask me if I wanted a warm up on the coffee. I gave up. I flagged her down again.
After several minutes and detours she brought the bill. She gave me the bill and said nothing – at all.
I paid the bill and gave her a 10% tip (I usually give the other waitresses up to a 30% tip because the bill is small and they worked hard for my benefit). I wanted to tell Erika that she wasn’t very good as a waitress but I let the small tip do the talking.
Labor Day. I decide to go to one of my favorite breakfast places to indulge in some eggs over easy with ham. Erika is my waitress.
She may have gotten my tip message or she may have decided that I’m not worth her effort. She behaved the same way as the first time. And this, even though the restaurant was almost empty and there were four other waitress waiting for customers.
Next time I will make sure I have a different waitress and I will tell the manager why.
****************
Are there really people so unaware of customers that they can’t do their job? And, in this economy? Or is it that some young people think that they have done their job by bringing you coffee once, taking your order and then your money when you are done. In other words, are there young people who feel they are entitled and don’t need to do any extra effort? I have encountered this before: there are the zealous customer service people and there are the “do I have to people?” I give great tips to the former.
I fear Obama and the Progressives are creating the latter class of worker aka the “Entitled.”
May 5, 2013 Leave a comment
Have you seen the TV program Bar Rescue? The show is in the same genre as the Restaurant Impossible and Hotel Impossible. Customer service based businesses are failing and someone from the outside comes into to save them.
Bar Rescue is a favorite show of mine and not because I’m a bar fly but rather because at one time I was one of three partners in a manufacturing business. I know what Jon is dealing with.
In my role as Vice President of Engineering I had to make business decisions on a 24/7 basis. I had to hire and sometimes fire engineers and designers. As VP I had to make sure that the equipment we designed and sold worked. I interfaced with customers, employees and technical issues on a constant basis.
As partners we dealt with cash-flow issues on a weekly or even daily basis. We would meet in our board room and hammer out the details. The three of us each had our specific roles to carry out. Each role carried responsibilities that supported the entire framework of the business.
I regularly made business trips across the U.S. and outside of the country to start-up the equipment. I was (and had to be) a major force behind our businesses’ multi-million dollar sales revenues. That was the only way to keep the business afloat and more than just a blip on the market place map we covered. So, I understand where Jon is coming from.
Jon Taffer is the force behind a Bar Rescue. You can tell that he knows his stuff. He knows what it takes to make a bar successful. He knows when to finesse and when to pound his fist to get a response. He will raise his voice to grab people’s attention away from their egos. As you watch the show you will see bar owners and their business partners who have no clue as to what to do. And because of their in-the-way egos they are deeply in debt when they call Jon in.
From appearances these bar owners seem to think that the bar will run itself, that people will naturally just come in off the street for a drink. But the numbers, the businesses’ accounting books Taffer shows them does not project wishful thinking. The numbers show reality. And that is why I like this program and why I like business – numbers don’t lie. Reality is the key ingredient to any success.
Now, our government is like a huge bar that needs rescuing from its managers. We the People, sadly, are like its troubled and overworked employees who do not have the say or the power to make the changes needed. We see the mess and try to do everything we can to make it better. But we reach a point where we see that management does not have a clue. Management wants the perks but not the responsibilities. If we speak up we are patted on the head and then kicked in the butt by our representatives.
Yes, there are voices of reality in government just as there are on the Bar rescue program. But those few voices are drowned out by huge political egos.
Now, I wish that we had a Government Rescue program. Washington’s decisions degrade our lives, our liberty daily. Those decisions wear us out. The U.S. government is out of control and rapidly growing deep into debt. Help!
To fix the debt issue Obama, like a poor business manager, wants to publicly litigate for more tax revenue from Americans by using words and phrases like “fair share,” and “social justice.” Just work harder he tells us.
Obama is not a hands-on guy ~ he is an attorney ~ a one-time professor of Constitutional law ~ with no clue as to how to run a business let alone a national economy. Elizabeth Warren is of the same cloth ~ all hyperbole and ego but no substance ~ both are true politicians.
As a nation we have more attorneys than business people in lead positions in our government. Is it any wonder that these attorneys are more concerned about “rights” and about jabbering on about what they can do for us if we hand over our liberty and our money?
What about the liberation of our human flourishing by embracing economic reality and making wise business decisions? Instead of new laws which constrain each of us and kick us in the butt we should be set free to do what we do best thereby generating increased revenues through successful and time-tested business practices.
The Free Market ~ people like you and me ~ already know how to deal with reality. What we need now is for someone to come in and toss the current “Progressive” management and to help us turn this nation around.
November 28, 2012 Leave a comment
I have to ask you…
I support myself and my family by working in the Free Market. I pay tons of taxes on money made in the Free Market. I pay all my bills including medical with money made in the Free Market. I give to charities and to those in need weekly from monies made in the Free Market, I find work and opportunity in the Free Market apart from a union…Do you have a problem with the Free Market?
Now here is something I have a problem with: why am I subsidizing people sitting on their ass? And, why am I subsidizing kids camping in a park protesting the Free Market? Why are illegals being allowed into the US and allowed to live off of me? Why is it that the Democrat’s only answer to every fiscal problem is “higher taxes” and it’s never to cut entitlement spending? And why, why is work punished?
From the Zero Hedge article
- For every 1.65 employed persons in the private sector, 1 person receives welfare assistance
- For every 1.25 employed persons in the private sector, 1 person receives welfare assistance or works for the government.
The punchline: 110 million privately employed workers; 88 million welfare recipients and government workers and rising rapidly.
And since nothing has changed in the past two years, and in fact the situation has gotten progressively (pardon the pun) worse, here is our conclusion on this topic from two years ago:
We have been writing for over a year, how the very top of America’s social order steals from the middle class each and every day. Now we finally know that the very bottom of the entitlement food chain also makes out like a bandit compared to that idiot American who actually works and pays their taxes. One can only also hope that in addition to seeing their disposable income be eaten away by a kleptocratic entitlement state, that the disappearing middle class is also selling off its weaponry. Because if it isn’t, and if it finally decides it has had enough, the outcome will not be surprising at all: it will be the same old that has occurred in virtually every revolution in the history of the world to date.
But for now, just stick head in sand, and pretend all is good. Self-deception is now the only thing left for the entire insolvent entitlement-addicted world.
I made my choice. How about you?
*****
August 31, 2012 Leave a comment
For fifteen years I was one of three partners in a manufacturing business, a business that I helped start from scratch, a business that when I left had sales revenues close to twenty million dollars.
Before starting the company I met with two friends. Each of them wanted to leave the company we were all working for. The three of us knew that the company we were at would soon fold. The owner had mismanaged the company into the ground, causing many to be fired. Soon the owner would take the assets out of this failed company and go start another business. We saw what was coming and so we decided it was time for us to set our sights higher and take care of our futures.
In the failed company the three of us soon-to-be partners were the three people who knew how to make the equipment being sold. And, though only one of us had a BS degree there were plenty years of experience between the other two partners. Each of us had met with customers and we knew manufacturing. We didn’t know all there was to know about running a business but we did want to find out for ourselves.
My own experience developed from many years of electrical engineering and design in the manufacturing sector. Over time I managed groups of designers and electricians. There were also many times when I was a welder, a fabricator, an electrician. I taught myself how to use AutoCAD and Microstation CAD design software. I taught myself how to program PLCs and computers. I went to night school to learn accounting, economics and business. I took math course, physics and welding. In order to commission equipment I traveled thousands of miles to customer sites across America, Mexico, Canada, and as far as Korea, Poland, Saudi Arabia and Brazil. I learned by applying myself to the task, by learning what I needed and simply by doing.
After several after-hours discussions at a local bar the three of us decided which day we would leave the troubled company to start our own business. Being integral to the functioning of the business our concurrent departures would mean that the company would rapidly fold. The company did close within a year. We went off on our own with no nets beneath us and just our own will to make things happen.
We began our business in a basement. We invested $3000.00 in start-up capital. We each claimed a share of equity in the new firm, incorporated as a Delaware corporation.
Now I have to tell you, starting a business with nothing but sheer determination is not easy. The risk of no immediate sales and therefore no paychecks for weeks and months is ever before you. With this in mind we began to solicit business by sending out business letters telling a broad spectrum of customers about our new venture. We even begged for business, often drastically discounting the sale just to get our foot in the door and to keep it there.
While we advertised I also set up the computers and the accounting system using what I learned at night school. I set up the accounts: Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, Assets, Revenue, W-4s, etc.
Over time (almost a year after starting) we received our first purchase order. I had developed a small position indicating device that could be readily used in the plastics industry to control plastic sheet gauge – a necessary requirement for thermoforming companies. We sold one and then two. I was then sent to California to install the later-to-be patented device. I had to make sure that our product did what we promised it would. Once it was proven we invoiced our first receivable.
We slowly gained sales momentum from customers who knew our reputations and knew of our capabilities. We sometimes over sold ourselves just to get in the door. There were many quiet anxious days along the way waiting for something bigger to break. When things did start happening we rented a small industrial building and set up what little we had. As orders came in and invoices went out we were then able to buy computers, software, drafting tables, welders, paint equipment, hand tools and a truck with our company name.
We soon hired staff: a fabricator. As business continued to grow over a time , a seeming eternity for us with our shoe string budget, we added more and more people. When I left the company there was over fifty employees on the payroll. This company, currently housed in a 325,000 sq. ft. building with large overhead cranes, is now doubling it size, building an expansion on the same site.
The reason I left the business and cashed out was simply the fact that the work of starting a new business is a 24/7 job. This intensive venture took a toll on me and my family. There were many nights away from my family. There were many intensive phone calls with clients. As the Vice president of Engineering I spent many hours trouble shooting customer problems in person or over the phone from home. I spent a lot of time interviewing people and then hiring and firing as needed. I supervised design work and managed over a dozen people, all engineers. I was on call constantly.
In the early days of our company I multitasked. There were only three of us and one of us had to go on the road to do the cold calling. I stayed with my other partner and we did what was needed. As an order came in I would create the electrical schematics on a drafting board, I would then order the parts. I would receive the parts, sort out the paper work, input accounts payable, print out checks on a line printer and then send out the checks to vendors. I would assemble the large-scale equipment by hand: I welded half-inch plates of carbon steel to create structural frames; I assembled control panels and wired the instrumentation. I also spray painted the finished products. Before that I would power up and test the equipment. I was front office, plant, truck driver, assembler, engineer and tired but excited. I was working for myself and creating growing equity. My piece of the pie was growing.
Until you’ve done something like start a business from scratch you would have no idea how intense, exhausting, scary and pleasurable it is to make your way in this world with just the work of your own hands. But the excitement doesn’t stop there.
As the company grows you hire people. But it is a scary proposition. You know you need more help but you don’t know where or when the next order is coming from. You bite your nails and finally say “OK, we need someone. Place the ad.”
When you hire someone and train them you’ve given them hope. At the same time your own stomach is wrenching with the fear that someday you may have to lay that person off if business drops off. It is all risk, calculated risk and that is what entrepreneurs do best: find a venture and put themselves and their money at risk in order to create something successful and to gain a return on their investment – an investment of dollars and tons of sweat equity. Obama knows nothing about what I talking about.
Obama risks nothing. He finds safety in numbers, in government. He is the child of safety nets. His absent father gave him no guidance whatsoever about business. It is apparent from Obama’s biographies that Obama learned to hate anything which might smack of colonialism. And Obama has wrongly conflated capitalism with colonialism. Obama’s only claim to success is his community organizing. We can see now that his organizing is nothing more than organizing taxpayer money to the benefit of his political gain.
No government built our business. Government with its ever-present paper work and regulations was ever the impedance to growing our business and hiring more people. Government now, in effect, hinders human flourishing. And I don’t have to tell you that Barrack Obama wants more government and less independent success. You’ll have to ask him why he hates business and demonizes success.
Sweat equity built our successful business not government. And it was not Obama, not Elizabeth Warren, not roads and bridges, not the IRS, not organized labor and not the three thousand dollars of start-up capital back in 1988. We built it with our own hands while paying corporate taxes up to 30%! Obama can kiss my sweaty ass!
Listen Obama (I know I am speaking to deaf ears) – “There is no sweat equity in golfing.”
******
August 30, 2012 Leave a comment
Paul Ryan calls out the blame shifters and political grifters, talks about his widowed mom’s success, gives small business at shot in the arm – “You did build that” – and tells the Obama poster generation that there is hope beyond Obama:
“College graduates should not have to live out their 20s in their childhood bedrooms, staring up at fading Obama posters and wondering when they can move out and get going with life.”
Update: Here’s Clint Eastwood making my day as he speaks to the empty chair at the RNC.
July 21, 2012 Leave a comment
H/T to a blog down under, another land of the free and the brave:
http://catallaxyfiles.com/category/libertarians-dont-live-by-argument-alone/
July 4, 2012 2 Comments
Have you seen the movie Independence Day? If you have then you would know that aliens have invaded our world. There are aliens in the air and, you might agree, there are aliens on the ground in the form of the cast.
A blurb about the movie from the IMDb website: “The aliens are coming and their goal is to invade and destroy. Fighting superior technology, Man’s best weapon is the will to survive.”
Man’s best weapon here may be to laugh off this farce. I like sci-fi. I think Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 A Space Odyssey and the original The Day the Earth Stood Still directed by Robert Wise are some of the best in that genre. But this movie is epic as pathetic slap-stick sci-fi. Of course you can’t take it seriously.
Will Smith’s pre~Men~In~Black typecasting of silly No Fear bravado and Randy Quaid’s dad~is~crazy~but~somehow~his~zaniness~endears~us~to~him role adds fuel to this trash can fire. The role of President Thomas Whitemore is played by a stiff whose part would have better played better by a teleprompter. Jeff Goldblum as David Levinson portrays an MIT educated-computer expert~chess playing~environmentalist~satellite tech~you~name~it~he’s~got~the~answer~for~you~kind~of~guy who ‘triangulates’ the four corners of this going-nowhere movie.
The movie’s special effects won an Academy Award and I’ll never know why. The effects are third-rate at best. (I thought Twister should have won that year). The movie does, though, offer something for the political observer ~ a perfect realization of the Obama presidency.
The dark, foreboding and humongous space ship hovering over Washington D.C. is a perfect archetype of the Obama Administration. Out of the bottom of the ominous alien craft come lethal rays: Obamacare taxes and immigration fiats. Cities and people’s lives are instantly destroyed. America is under attack.
There is no reason given for why this is happening other than America is America and the aliens say that America must die. So it is that Eric Holder, an onerous chief alien, sits in the mother ship’s ivory tower directing America’s destruction with reserved glee.
“It’s the end of the world as we know it.” At least for America as we have known it.
…The space ship is hovering….
Constance (the President’s Press Secretary): “Now what do we do?
President Thomas Whitmore: “Address the nation. There’s gonna be a lot of frightened people out there.”
Constance: “Yeah, I’m one of ’em.”
Wow! Someone save us from the dialog! Thankfully the brave and ‘wacky’ heros played by Will Smith and Randy Quaid) come to America’s aid and help bring an end to this distraction of a movie.
Using viral computer ‘implants’ and sexy aircraft maneuvering the alien ‘death’ ship is decimated but only after hundreds of minor skirmishes with the pesky alien ‘gnats’ (the larva born in Obama’s ideological intransigence or perhaps in Jeff Goldblum’s The Fly movie).
The next time you watch this movie listen to the dialog. It deserves a Tom Servo and Crow T. Robot of Mystery Science Theatre over dubbing!
We can turn a movie off when the Hollywood kitsch gets to be too much or when the credits (and debits) finally roll. But we can’t turn off government when it makes no sense. Except if you and I begin voting it out of our lives.
Do you want freedom from annihilation by Obamacare taxation? How about “Fighting for our right to live ~ to exist” without own government’s tyranny, oppression and persecution? How about freedom from government’s intrusion of our privacy and its coercive mandates? Will the middle class now go quietly into the night now that it is being taxed into oblivion?
America’s Independence began when it resisted taxation without representation. Now we have representation that doesn’t represent our best interests and that mimics King George’s taxation edicts. Let’s throw off the shackles of tyranny and vaporize the black cloud of government that overshadows us wherever we go. Vote Obama and the Dems out.
It is confirmed. There is alien life out there. They are living among us: Obama, Reid, Pelosi, Holder, Napolitano, Durbin, Charles Rangel, Barbara Boxer, Elizabeth Warren…
Cindy Wity
Green with Egalitarianism
January 6, 2013 Leave a comment
After addressing an envelope this morning, I pulled a recently purchased book of postage stamps out of my wallet. The first thing I noticed was the words “Equality Forever” on the stamp I used. The stamp booklet included a series of U.S. postage stamps: “Liberty Forever,” “Freedom Forever,” Justice Forever,” and “Equality Forever.”
“The U.S. flag flies high with stars and stripes! Each stamp represents an important theme in America’s development as a nation: Freedom, Liberty, Equality, and Justice.”
Be aware. The word “Equality” is taking on a new meaning, a meaning proscribed by Obama and the Progressive Left. Equality is now to be understood as “equal outcomes” and not simply as “all men are created equal.”
Since the foundations of this country were laid with the Bill of Rights and the Constitution we have agreed as a nation that “All men are created equal.” This includes and is limited to the God given natural rights of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” afforded to men and women of every race. Beyond that there are no guarantees in life. Life is not fair.
Now when you consider egalitarianism or equal outcomes as “equality” as Progressives do you must by necessity look at what your neighbor has to see if your social-economic status is equal or unequal to that of your neighbor. You will by necessity be looking to see if you are keeping up with the Joneses. You will by necessity be looking to see if grass is greener beyond your own yard. Right? We do this right now without the prompting of government.
But with Obama and the Progressive Left’s ever increasing demands for “fair share” redistribution you are provoked to look with dissatisfaction, with greed and envy, upon your neighbor. You are not encouraged to view your personal situation with contentment. Instead, you are encouraged to look upon your neighbor as a certain class of people above or below you. Obama is in effect telling you to be discontent and to seek “equality” or “equal outcomes” through redistribution of incomes. That is the spiel of Obama and the Progressive Left.
If the spiel is accepted and acted on it will affect every aspect of your life. Consider this scenario:
Two men work as drafters in an engineering company. They were both hired at the same time. Drafter Number One comes to work early, does his work as drafter and back checks his work to ensure its quality.
Drafter number Two comes to work a few minutes before 8:00. He does the work required of him and some of his work requires redrafting. He spends a lot of time talking to his cube mates and on the internet. He also goes outside to have a ten minute smoke break every half hour.
Would it be fair to pay these men the same wage? Egalitarian wages ignore work ethics ~ empirical reality ~ in favor of being…equal. But would paying both men the same exact wages be fair?
I’ll give another example of the folly of equal outcomes from one of my most visited posts: Where Do You Start?
And from the Thomas Sowell Reader, his article Meaningless “Equality”:
For more information about the foolishness of the current use of the word “equality” read Thomas Sowell’s The Quest for Cosmic Justice.
Should government be the arbiter of what is fair? Does government share your values? As we speak Obama is seeking to redistribute monies ~ “spreading the wealth” ~ from the suburbs to the cities to effect egalitarianism.
You work hard to have a suburban home where your kids can go to school. The suburbs provide space for your family to grow. You feel safer out in the suburbs. Your tax money pays for the fire and police, for parks and clean streets and many other benefits. Many black Americans move to the suburbs to be free of the city and its onerous taxes and its crime. Obama is right now taking your tax money and redistributing it to the cities. In other words some of your tax money is not being spent on your home district but it is given to someone else. Is this fair?
The reality of recent redistribution is much grimmer. The truth is that the money taken from you the taxpayer under the guise of “fair share” egalitarian purposes is given to special interest groups that support a certain political party – cronyism.
And in the recent fiscal cliff deal who are the big winners? Not you the taxpayer.
Who are getting tax breaks?
Among others rum distillers, Hollywood film producers and NASCAR! Is this egalitarian?
Finally, should we be looking at our neighbor’s property and demanding that we have the same things, the same wages, and the same health care, the same…? What does Jesus want us to do instead of being green with egalitarianism?
And from the writer of the letter to the Hebrews:
And from the apostle Paul:
Is Jesus being dismissive of our needs? Or, is He realigning our view of our worldly needs in accordance with True values found only in a personal relationship with him. Right now Obama’s Progressive message is directly opposed to God’s message of contentment. Right now Obama wants you to have a personal relationship with government. He wants government to be the theocratic Benefactor much like how most of Europe has chosen government over God. Does the godlessness and socialism of Europe make you green with envy? Green with egalitarianism? I wonder? If so, you are at odds with the God Who is Just and will give to every man as he deserves.
WYSINATI: What you see is NOT all there is.
Our Father in Heaven “Give us this day our daily bread.”
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Filed under commentary, Writing Tagged with Christianity, class warfare, contentment, economy, egalitarianism, envy, equality, keeping up with the joneses, Liberlaism, natural rights, Occupy Wall Street, politics, progressvies, social class, U.S. Flag Four Flags stamps