Today I am thankful for...

The turkey is out in the garage in a roaster oven, quietly getting ready to be taken to the assisted living facility where GA's parents are expecting us to arrive, bringing Thanksgiving dinner with us.

So this would be a good time to think about what I am thankful for, while waiting for my turn to go in and wash the prep dishes in the kitchen.

These days, it has become fashionable to be "thankful" to each other, rather than God. The purpose of the holiday was clearly to set aside a day for gratitude to the Creator, but the secular segment of American society has succeeded in doing to Thanksgiving what they have done to Christmas, and they take advantage of the holiday to enjoy the fun parts but excise God from it - a most ungrateful attitude to have. But worship is, after all, supposed to be voluntary, or what use is it?

So the first thing I'm grateful for, in no particular order, is the fact that we are still free in America - not as free as the Founders intended, because so many are willing to empower government with duties they don't want to bother with personally. But still free enough to worship as we please, at least in private - we aren't really allowed to be too public about it, lest somebody see it and be made uncomfortable.  They can't really forbid it is the point - we still retain the right of worship and free speech, if we're willing to accept being ridiculed for it. Some places in the world will behead you over it, so a little ridicule can be accepted. Some imply that I'm not a "free thinker." I can deal with that, and I can be perfectly confident that I think freely, other opinions notwithstanding. And I am grateful that they, too, have the same free choice that I do.

I am also thankful for these things...

I was able to retire early, which means I can enjoy not having to go to work every day at an earlier age, when I am able to still enjoy things.

I have a wonderful wife, whom God gave to me at a time when I wondered if I would have no mate.

That same wonderful wife seems to be free of cancer, though we can't be absolutely sure. We have all the assurance we can expect to have in such circumstances, that it is indeed so. I am grateful that God moved us to Houston, against my preference, so that when the cancer was found she was working for the best cancer center in the entire world, and she also had an excellent health plan to pay for it.

I am grateful that my sister has found better health and is enjoying a new hobby, geocaching, which has provided fun and excitement in her own retirement years.

I am grateful that my mother is still around, and of sound mind and body, which is not surprising after a lifetime of walking happily with God.

I am grateful for my daughters, and for the grandchildren they have provided. 

I am grateful for the friends I have. They are fine friends, and numerous, and so enjoyable to be around. Dave and Sumi, Cody and Jena, Beau and Charlotte, Phil and Misti, Chaston and Kristina, Carl and Jane, Justin and Ashley, Maria and Maya, James and Marcus, Lois and family... the list goes on and on.

I am grateful that I can still see well enough to read and drive and go geocaching.

I am grateful for my cousins in Louisville, and my aunts and uncles and other family. I am grateful that I was able to go to the Dominican Republic to help start a fledgling drama ministry, and bring back some coffee.

I am grateful for all the traveling I have been able to do, in Europe, in Mexico, all over the USA.

I am also grateful for things that most of us only appreciate when they don't work: refrigerators, air conditioning, TV, the internet - yeah, we could live without them, but they make life so pleasant. Well, maybe not TV, except for movies. :)

I am grateful for my comfortable home.

And I am grateful for all the turkey sandwiches to come. Oh, yeah, baby!

Robbed Twice

I keep hearing these angry complaints about the corporations.

Mostly, they're accused of being greedy, which they are.

What bothers me most, though, is how most people see this as a failure of capitalism. What they are doing is not capitalism, it's fascism.

Yes, I said fascism. You probably see the word fascism and you think of nazis, kicking down doors and burning jews in a nearby oven. But fascism simply refers to a working relationship between government and business. In the 1930's, fascist governments ran the businesses. It was said of such governments that "they make the trains run on time." But it was also said, correctly, that there was a certain loss of freedom in such an arrangement, and that is the problem.

We need to stop thinking in terms of capitalism allowing the corporations to screw people simply because they don't pay high enough wages. We already have the government setting the minimum wage, and in any case, "unfair" wages aren't really the problem.

Here is the problem. Our government has encouraged all of us to invest our retirement money in IRA's, and similar tax-deferred arrangements. This benefits the corporations in an obvious way - they can more easily attract investment money, and more important, those investments are controlled indirectly, which means the investors who own minor portions of the companies have no real say in how the companies are run. They simply hand over their money and hope for the best.

This allows the CEOs of those companies to collect huge salaries with little or no pressure to actually earn those salaries. The boards who would normally keep that sort of thing in check have no incentive to do so, because most of the investors have no incentive to pay any attention to how the companies are run. For instance, my IRA is spread out over forty or fifty companies. It's a mutual fund. There is no real way for me to influence the policies of the companies I've invested in.

So here's what they do instead of paying me my dividends. They (the corporations) pour money into the campaign funds of politicians who I not only don't want to support, I actually want them out of office. Did you get that? They're taking my money and giving it to politicians I oppose. And it's worth noting that most of those corporations donate to both major parties. You might ask yourself why.

The politicians, in turn, give money back to the companies, in the form of contracts, subsidies, and sometimes out-and-out gifts, only they call them "bail outs" when they just give them the money.

Let's review: the government provides incentives I cannot ignore to invest my money in businesses. The businesses take my money and give it to the politicians I don't even like. Then the politicians use the power of government to take my money by taxation, and give it to the companies. It's a win-win for them, but I get robbed twice.

Now, to make it worse, socialists are camping out at Wall Street and other places where businesses make their homes, and they demand... even more power for government to transfer wealth. I assume that they expect wealth to transfer into their pockets, even though the direction of flow has always been in the other direction. (What was that about the definition of insanity?)

Now, the government has no Constitutional authority to take tax money and give it to private corporations. They just do it, because few of us really care about rule of law and limited government anymore. In fact, the news outlets constantly tell us that such ideas as limited government are "insane." Of course, the news outlets are all owned by... corporations.

The solution here is to make one minor change in election law: make it illegal for corporations to donate any money to a political campaign. Actually, it should be illegal for anybody to donate to a campaign for any candidate he can't actually vote for, and that would include corporations, who aren't really people in any practical sense, and cannot vote.

Yet what we have in our election laws is that citizens, meaning you and I, have a strict limit on how much we can donate to a campaign. We can't even put up a poster or distribute a flyer for our preferred candidate unless we first file paperwork with the FEC. Every time a new law comes out to "take the money out of politics" or "make it more fair," the effect of that law is to further limit the power of the individual and increase the power of the corporations. Millions of dollars go from corporations to the candidates who are in bed with them, but candidates who depend on real people for support can't get news coverage, can't get much money because of contribution limits, and are painted as unelectable because they... um... don't get much money.

With real capitalism, poorly run businesses should be allowed to fail, no matter how big they are. Politicians should never be allowed to give tax money to them for any reason. Corporations shouldn't be allowed to give money to politicians. That would be real election and finance reform, if we could only get it.