Saturday, May 28, 2011

What do seat belts and antsy 5 year olds have in common?

Yesterday started like every other day. After performing the morning routines I got into my car, backed out of the garage and instinctively reached over my left shoulder for the seat belt, pulled it across my chest and heard the snug “click” as it became operational. This has not always been so. When I was a teenager I drove a 1966 Volkswagen beetle which had no working seat belt…among the many non-working things it didn’t have. Once I got married my wife hounded me about my seat belt usage until it finally became second nature. Now I wouldn’t dream of going anywhere in a car without a functioning seat belt. But on this particular morning my car radio was ablaze with warnings about a new State Police initiative called “Click-it or Ticket”. Yes, my all-knowing, all caring government was giving me fair warning this Memorial weekend eve that if I was caught not using my seat belt, there would be hell to pay. “Cops nationwide are clamping down!!”..the commercials warned. “It’s the LAW”!! And just then in a flash of clarity it occurred to me. This is why the United States of America will NEVER get its financial house in order.

Some government agency somewhere had decided to devise a national advertising campaign to bring attention to the fact that law enforcement would be lying in the tall grass of interstate highways all over the country looking to catch us not using our safety belts and if we knew what was good for us we better buckle up. Our government then went to considerable expense ( advertising ain’t cheap ) to remind us that failure to wear a seat belt is now against the law. So now I must add seat belt usage to the list of 39,678 other routine details of my daily life that now has fallen under the scrutiny of my government.

All crimes have victims. If I fail to use a seat belt and have an accident that causes avoidable injury then I and I alone am the victim. My fellow passengers aren’t affected. The guy I hit wasn’t affected because I wasn’t wearing a seat belt. He was hit because I was frantically trying to change the channel of my radio to avoid yet another annoying commercial warning me to Click-it or Ticket! So, why is not wearing a seat belt illegal? What business is it of the government whether or not I wear a seat belt? Under what provision of our Constitution does the authority for such a law reside?

You may say..but Doug, this law is for your own good! The government is using public policy to promote your general welfare. Maybe if there’s the threat of a fine people will be more willing to do the right thing. This law will “save lives”! Suppose I don’t want saving? Am I not allowed to make a stupid decision that doesn’t hurt anyone else? If the government is so concerned with saving my life why don’t they come into my house, go through the fridge and throw out all the crap I eat that’s full of fat and sugar? No..wait. Lets not give them any ideas.

Now, lets get back to our fiscal nightmares and my epiphany. The reason we are doomed is simply this. For every personal liberty loving crank like me there are 7 or 8 of my fellow citizens who are perfectly fine with handing out citations to seat belt rebels. They applaud , indeed, demand that their government “do something” about every problem that society encounters whether large or small, grave or trivial, cost be damned! Don’t believe me? On my commute yesterday after the seat belt ad came news that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has found 500 million dollars of our money to fund a new program called…wait for it… the Race To The Top Early Learning Challenge. Among other issues the program will deal with “5 year olds who cannot sit still in a Kindergarten classroom” Ms. Sebelius noted expertly , “because if a 5 year old cannot sit still it is unlikely that he or she will do well in Kindergarten” The only thing sadder to me than the utter sophistry of that statement is the price tag of her foolishness. We will spend half a billion dollars to get the ants out of juniors’ pants. That’s half a billion dollars that we do not have. But not a peep of protest comes up from the American people because it will be cast as a program that’s..”for the children”. The simple fact is that over the years we have become accustomed to the notion that there isn’t a single problem facing us that can’t be tamed by the application of a government program. If we lack the will to end the small outrages like seat belt laws and billion dollar “why can’t Johnnie sit still boondoggles” we have no chance at entitlement reform. Poor Paul Ryan probably never dreamed that he would be depicted in campaign commercials literally pushing a wheelchair bound grandma over a cliff all because he had the audacity to ask the question..”How in God’s name are we going to be able to pay for Medicare in 20 years if we don’t fix it?” Unless and until the American people rediscover their love of liberty, Democrats will always win the spending argument. I’m not optimistic.

Saturday, May 14, 2011

Quanitative Easing in the Dunnevant House

Our nation is currently running a 1.6 trillion dollar annual account deficit. That means we are spending 1.6 trillion dollars more than we are bringing in to the treasury. To fund this shortfall the Federal Reserve sells U.S. treasury notes. 30% of these notes are bought by people and other countries and 70% are bought by the Federal Reserve itself. This is called “quantitative easing”. If my math is correct that means that each week our government spends 31 billion dollars that it doesn’t have, 21 billion of which it borrows…from itself. This is what passes for monetary policy in 2011. I wonder how “quantitative easing” would work in the Dunnevant household? Hmmm…

Me: Hey sweetie. Whatsya doing?

Pam: Oh..just took Molly for a walk and in so doing I created or saved 250 calories!

Me: Awesome! Guess what?! I just got the new Down East magazine in the mail and look at this incredible lake house! Its on Lake Megonticook, only 5 miles from Camden and the price was just slashed to $850,000.

Pam: Honey that’s great but this is probably not a good time to be buying a lake house what with you losing your job and all.

Me: That’s just a temporary setback sweetie. Heck, we’re Americans and we can do anything when we set our minds to. Just think of all of the enjoyment we will get out of this place for years to come. Not to mention the boost this will give to the economy up in Camden.

Pam: Well, when you put it that way, how can we not invest in our future enjoyment and overall standard of living? Who are we to withhold economic benefits from the fine people in Maine. I’m sold! But what about the money?

Me: I will call the bank and work out a bipartisan compromise that will raise our debt ceiling.

Pam: I don’t think that’s a very good idea, honey. One of their rude employees called the other day complaining because we were late on all of our payments. They said something about we were spending much more than we were making each month and that if we didn’t stop soon they were going to be really mad.

Me: HaHa!! Crazy right? Don’t they realize what good things we are doing here?! I’ve created or saved countless jobs over at the Cadillac dealer and Home Depot, not to mention all the financial stimulus that you have provided to Panera and New York and Company.

Pam: True dear…but maybe they do have a point. Are you sure that withdrawing all of the money from our retirement plan last month to pay for our 30th wedding anniversary cruise around the world was the right thing to do?

Me: You silly goose…of course it was!! That’s in our future and we must never hesitate to invest in our future. Think of all of the wonderful memories we’ll create or save on that trip.

Pam: Good point love. Besides, I suppose if the bills pile up too high there will always be Kaitlin and Patrick there to take care of it all after we’re gone.

Me: Exactly! And I’m sure they won’t mind at all. A small price to pay for the wonderful life we gave them. I’m hungry! What do you say we go over to the Melting Pot for a ridiculously expensive six course meal? Take a quick shower while I call MasterCard to inform them that I’m arbitrarily raising my credit limit.

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Kaitlin Elizabeth Dunnevant

My daughter turns 24 today. Kaitlin Elizabeth Dunnevant. I’ve always liked the way her name rolled off the tongue. Lots of letters and syllables coming together to make a pretty sound. On her birthday I will take a minute to make a partial list of the many things that come together to make her so wonderful.

* She is the lump in my throat every time I watch Father of the Bride.

* She is the unexpected catch in my voice whenever I brag about her at work.

* In a life of mistakes she is evidence that I got something right.

* She is the smile on my face every time I see a blonde curly-haired two year old in a yellow dress.

* She was the pit in my stomach whenever teenage boys with bad intentions came around, and they all had bad intentions.

* When her softball team lost a thrilling game in the bottom of the last inning she was the only one with tears coming down her cheeks. She may be the most competitive Dunnevant of them all. It’s a glorious thing.

* On the five minute drive to school in second grade I could always make her smile at least once no matter how miserable she was and no matter how hard she tried not to.

* I marvel at the level of discipline she has developed.

* She is the pride I feel when I see her curled up on the sofa reading yet another book. My gift to her.

* When I see her fierce loyalty to friends, her tender heart to the less fortunate, her love and devotion to all things family I realize how amazing my grandchildren will be to behold.

* She is the shame I feel still that I spent the first 24 hours of her life disappointed that she wasn’t a son.

So on this day, may my daughter with the crooked smile, the curly hair, the brilliant mind, stunning beauty and doting father have an awesome day. And tonight at Outback you can have something besides water!

Saturday, May 7, 2011

The Tale Of Three Mothers

There are three mothers in my life. My biological Mother, my Mother-in-law, and my wife. On the eve of their big day, a few words.

Whenever someone accuses me of being opinionated and strong willed I blame my Mom. She is an amazing woman who shaped me in a thousand ways. My ability to think on my feet I got from her. My passion for travel from her. My curiosity about the world…her. My Mom also infused in me a love for the Bible. Verses dripped from her lips like an act of God, not in the phony forced way of many, but rather it was as if she had literally grafted God’s word to her heart and it flowed out contemporaneously and naturally in conversation. This was a woman who took her faith seriously and she had little patience with those who didn’t. It has been said that my Mother could argue with a fencepost but what is not said is that there exists no fencepost in the world that would stand a chance against her untrained logic. One of my earliest memories on this earth involves my Mom’s beautiful, rich virbrato alto singing “Tell Me the Old Old Story” while giving me a bath one summer night when the fire-flies were pulsing just outside. She had a way of calming me and wrapping me lovingly in her arms before putting me to bed that told me that I lived in the safest place on earth.

Mother-in-law jokes are a National tradition in this country. But for me none of them are ever funny. Although she had many reasons to worry when her daughter announced our intentions ( I didn’t exactly have a spotless resume) she never held back her support for me. In 27 years of marriage she has never once interfered in our lives..not one time. She has always been there for us when we needed her, as dependable as a best friend. She adores her grandkids and would run through a gauntlet for all of us. My marriage is as strong as it is in no small part because of her steadfast loving presence in our lives.

I married my wife for many reasons but primarily because she was so scorchingly hot. In this I was not unlike most other men on our planet. It’s only after the wedding that the luckiest of us discover what an amazing and undeserved windfall we have stumbled into. My wife turned out to be one of the finest human beings I have ever had the good fortune to know. Never was this more evident to me than on the two days that our children were born. I was just not prepared for her strength. I wasn’t ready for her toughness. In the years after I have stood off in the corner of rooms marveling at her amazing powers of organization, her blinding efficiency and the unfathomable depths of her mother’s love. In our house I’ve always had the easy job of making money and being Mr. Fun. I come sweeping in after dinner collapsing on the floor in a pile of tickling and giggles. I had the awesome job of giving them their baths and reading bedtime stories and kissing their sweet faces before the lights were switched off. But my wife had literally everything else. She was the one who made sure they got signed up on time for little league. She was the one who made sure that they turned in their homework, filled out their applications for church camp, got their shots, ended up with straight teeth and remembered to bring flowers on teacher appreciation day. My wife was the reason that our kids made it, the reason that they became the beautiful bright well-adjusted adults they are today. I just watched in baffled amazement and paid the bills. She has simply been the most valuable member of our family for the past 25 years and is the only thing that stands between me and oblivion. Mother’s Day is the day were credit is given where it is most assuredly due. I consider myself blessed that I have three women to praise.

Lucky me.

Friday, May 6, 2011

Circle the Wagons

There’s a funny dynamic that occurs in a family. No matter how much you might fight with your brothers or sisters, no matter how many names you may call them in the midst of knock-down drag-out fights over time spent hogging the bathroom and whatnot something odd happens when someone from outside the family joins in. Its perfectly fine for me to call my sister a loud-mouthed blowhard but whoa be unto the poor soul from down the street who calls her a loud-mouthed blowhard. That’s my sister you’re talking about bud!! Something very similar happened to me this morning when I opened my online version of Der Spiegel.

I was treated to a charming interview with a German Political Scientist who was complaining about the “immature naiveté “ of the American celebrations at Times Square following the killing of Bin Laden. While its true that I have written on this very blog about my own ambivalence on this matter and my own son wrote quite poignantly of his own conflicts, there was something particularly galling about having to listen to this lecture from…a German. This professor went on and on about the unseemliness of American barbarism and our foolish and unnecessary provocation of the Muslim world. Really? A German feels the need to lecture us about barbarism? A German whose Grandfather was probably elbowing people out of the way 75 years ago so he could catch a glimpse of the Fuehrer. I don’t know that a citizen of a nation that plunged us all into World War twice in the last century is in any position to preach about barbarism. His nation gave us Adolph Hitler and the slaughter of 6 million jews. You want to talk about immature naiveté? Ok lets start with every segment of German society rolling over to accommodate the Nazi party in the 1930’s. I’m thinking that maybe there should be a 100 year gag rule on any country that invades all of its neighbors twice in 25 years prohibiting them from opening their pie-holds in criticism of any other country’s foreign policy. So to all German political scientists out there..um..shut up!

Then I moved on to Le Monde and heard all about the French being aghast at the jubilant displays of “American Triumphalism”. Ahh, the French. As irritating as the Germans can be, at least they give us spectacular beer and the finest cars in the world. From the French we just get haughty condescension and the croissant. I can just picture some Parisian sitting at a lovely café at noon beginning his 3 hour lunch break complaining about our triumphalism secure in the knowledge that thanks to Seal Team Six his chances of being blown to smithereens just dramatically declined. We Americans are constantly reminded of the superiority of French society with its bountiful safety net, fine food, and elegance. Wonderful. While our revolution produced the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights and Thomas Jefferson, the French version 20 years later ushered in the Jacobin Reign of Terror that claimed the lives of upwards of 30000 Frenchmen, and introduced a new word into the world’s lexicon…the Guillotine. The supposedly superior French society has produced 57 Nobel Prize winners while we knuckle-dragging Americans have somehow managed to win 327. While our military has had to bail out the French twice in the recent past you would think our boys would get a bit more respect from our friends in Paris. Whenever I am confronted with French whining I think about that great Craig’s List add for the French Infantry rifle…”in mint condition, never been fired and only thrown to the ground twice!” Save me from pious hand wringing from a bunch of cheese eating surrender monkeys who folded at the first whiff of diesel fuel from Hitler’s tanks, then formed the traitorous Vichy government to complete their total humiliation. No wonder they are so offended by military success.

So on this day I circle the wagons. That’s my country you’re talking about bud!!

Thursday, May 5, 2011

Smoke 'Em if You Got 'Em...please!!

I’ve never quite understood why young people are generally more politically liberal than older people. Sure, I know all about youthful naiveté and innocence and how every kid grows up wanting to change the world and all. But there seems to be a gigantic disconnect between the young appetite for activist government policy and the reality of actuarial tables. Let me try to explain.

If kids today knew just how screwed they are they would be marching on every nursing home in the United States with signs that read..”Die already!!!” …and “80 years is enough Gramps!!”. Why don’t kids realize how the baby-boomers like me are taking them to the cleaners and will be forever in the future? My two children will be taxed to the moon and back to pay for Mom and Dad’s sweet pension check from Uncle Sam. And the best part is, by the time they are old enough to collect, we’ll all be dead and their retirement age will have been raised to 85 so if they do live long enough to get any money from the government they will have to spend it all on Dentucream and adult undergarments! And it all started when the do-gooders of the American left set their high-minded sights on cigarettes. That’s right, cigarettes!

In 1950 we were a smoking nation. Watch any movie from the forties and fifties and if you can make out the actors through all the smoke you will see that they have cigarettes hanging from their lips. And they looked so good doing it! Back then fully 46% of the population smoked. Not surprisingly longevity in the fifties was around age 65 meaning we had a perfect system. People loved to smoke and cancer loved to shave 15 years or so off smokers’ life spans. Everyone got what they wanted! Now 60 years later, after banning cigarette commercials, adding graphic warnings to packages, passing thousands of laws banning smoking in public places, smoking is now indulged in by only 21% of the U.S. population and guess what?? We’re living a lot longer…A LOT longer. The average lifespan in the U.S. today is roughly 78 years which means that the average retiree gets about 12 more years of paychecks from the Treasury than he used to 60 years ago. And its not just smoking. Now the “Too-Much Fun Patrol” has turned their gaze on childhood obesity. By all means , lets encourage healthier eating habits among all those elementary school porkers out there so they too can live to be 100.

When Social Security was designed back in the thirties the government was secure in the knowledge that very few workers would EVER live long enough in retirement to actually cost them anything what with all the smoking and diarrhea and influenza killing people left and right. Now look at us. We’ve killed off Joe Camel. Michelle Obama is taking the Twinkees away from junior, and Pepto-Bismol sells over the counter for $4. Throw in seat belt laws, helmet laws, air-bags and the Clean Air Act and what you find yourself with is a nation of future ninety year old tech-saavy Grandmas tweeting their congressmen not to even THINK about cutting their Medicare.

So kids, keep voting that Progressive ticket, and ..we’ll leave the light on for ya!

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Bin Laden Sleeps With The Fishes

Osama Bin Laden is dead and we are dancing in the streets. He was a vile man who took great pleasure in the destruction of the west and the killing of thousands. I do not shed any tears for him. There is something in the heart of men and women everywhere that longs for justice especially when it is so long delayed. This longing helps explain the spontaneous celebrations. I will not here judge those who have felt the need to blow off patriotic steam by waving flags, singing songs and chanting “USA, USA”. But when hundreds of thousands gathered in Times Square in 1945 and that happy sailor planted that famous kiss on that happy nurse, they were celebrating the end of something terrible. They were joyous because the long bloody mess was over. No one sang the Star-Spangled Banner when Adolph Hitler killed himself. The day after Bin Laden sleeps with the fishes, nothing is over.

But there are questions. Does anyone find it troubling that the man who master mined 9/11 spent the last six years living across the street from a police station in a country that has received over 5 billion dollars in aid from the American tax payer? This is just the latest in a long series of infuriating entanglements that we have gotten ourselves into these past 10 years. Our vaunted terrorism-fighting ally Pakistan has looked the other way for six years all the while cashing our checks. We expend blood and treasure trying to build schools and hospitals in Afghanistan and Iraq, trying to force-feed democracy to people who hate our guts, and then have to listen to a chorus of critics in Europe and the United Nations. Osama Bin Laden is dead. Good. Now, get us the hell out of there.

I cannot leave this topic without praising the skill and tactical brilliance demonstrated by the Special Forces who carried it out. We are lucky that something in this country is still the best in the world. We are fortunate that at least some branch of government is still all about excellence. President Obama also deserves praise for having the guts to take the risk that this operation carried. If it had blown up in his face like the Iranian hostage rescue did for Carter he would be getting ripped apart today since defeat is an orphan and victory has a thousand fathers. But I will save my patriotic exhibitions for the day when those brave men and women finally come home from the endless misadventures of the Middle East.