Hope Writes

I have to agree with you that we're not there yet but....we are close to realizing that this cloak and dagger government has been wasting valuable resources given it by citizens of this great Nation.  That my friend will lead to a civil war of sorts, one which will bring this great country to its knees once again as it was some 130 or so years ago.  The creators of our constitution have been mocked to the point of disbelief.  The real heroes of this country that laid their lives down for freedom and liberty are being trashed by those that can't conceive of this sort of sacrifice.  We are being sold to the highest bidder as if we are really just a comodity and not a 'Republic for which it stands"

 

People used to have the notion that to get ahead you had to work.  In this country that has become the thought pattern of the minority and now, unfortunately, we manifest such laziness and greed that hatred has displaced love and honor for most.  How sad for us all.  I say this not to evoke anger but to institute a reaction of integrity for ones' self esteem and worth.  It seems we have forgotten how to look into the mirror and be honest with ourselves. Instead, that small white lie has grown to the mighty oak of untruths; right being wrong, good being evil....this mindset first manifests itself in the mirror and then walks out the door to spread.

 

I have become as I desired to be.  What happened to this thought pattern?  What happened to "you can achieve whatever you choose in America?  We settled for what was easy and not what was earned.  We accepted the tailings and threw out the product.  It became easier to wait for a check in the mailbox than to evoke our imaginations and produce what we needed.  I've watched this great country send it's best and brightest to solve issues of other countries only to be spit on for recognizing the sacrifices of these Americans.

 

I've often asked the question "What other Nation allows it's people to call themselves anything other than who they are rather who they wish they were for preferential treatment?  I've yet to here a German say he's a African-German or hear of someone saying they were Italian-African or who ever heard of the person who called himself a Brazilian-Australian?  Yet, in America, we have been told it's not right to call someone an American if they wish to be called by a Homeland first and foremost......WHAT?

If a person wishes to be called anything BUT an American and who resides in this country, they need to leave this country.  They don't understand what it means to be here at all.  Travel to some of these countries where real Americans are buried and ask some of the natives what they call themselves.  Real Americans have sacrificed all for so little given respect, and yet, asked again to give, they would...and do.

So next time someone says they are anything but an American, please ask them what that means and wait for an answer.  If you get an answer, ask them why they think their elders came to this land and what they called themselves before they set foot here.  I'll bet the answer won't start with a Homeland....only in America!

Yes we are close to civil war, revolt and an all out revolution but, not the sort that people think it will be.  This one will be based on the principles of those that actually love America, desire to be Americans and will give all for this Republic....GOD BLESS AMERICA!  GH

From The Show Me State...

I don't think we are "there"...yet...

Our Future With The Illegal Immigrant In Charge

Obamacare Predictions: Part II

Published by Briggs at 5:21 am

Your health care will degrade

Since the deficit will be almost impossibly high, taxes will not be able to be raised fast enough to pay for it. Thus, in the period of ten to twenty years out, politicians will be forced to cut government payouts.

This includes payouts from Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare. Again, this is not something which is merely probable, but is certain. Demographics alone guarantee this.

Health care must eventually be “rationed,” in the same sense as it is in other countries with socialized medicine. In effect, those other countries will also suffer, because the States will no longer be available as a destination for superior care. Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Danny Williams will have to stay home next time he wants heart surgery.

Currently, few to none are denied care, regardless of their financial status. Poor people go to the emergency room for (expensive) routine care, for example. These costs are spread among those with money: already, in effect, people with insurance are already subsidizing those without.

That will continue to be so under Obamacare, where the subsidies are given a new name, but with the addition of two new layers of bureaucracy: one on the business and hospital side, and one on government. The cost savings of shifting people out of the emergency rooms and into offices will be ate up by paperwork. That must mean that service will degrade.

Be clear: poor people aren’t being granted new health, they are being granted a new name for what is already given.

Because this is true, I think predictions about doctor shortages are incorrect in one sense. Since everybody can already have care if they need it, there are, within some range, enough physicians to provide that care.

I mean, there will not be a flood of new patients, because these people are already there, somewhere in the system. What will instead happen is that these people will be redistributed in the system. We will see fewer ER visits for routine care, and more to general practitioners. There could be a doctor shortage in that sense, but that will quickly stabilize.

Doctors will receive less money for their services, and this will persuade some that would opt for that career to do something else. Any trend in availability will be gradual, however, because of the large inertia in the system.

Your liberty will be restricted

Health can mean, and will come to mean, anything which is related to human behavior. Absolutely everything you can think of, or say, or do can be plausibly related to health.

Since the government will be paying the bills, it will feel it has the right to proscribe or tax any behavior that would adversely affect your “health.”

Government especially will call for new sin taxes to pay for the deficit. This will lead to hypocrisy and lying of the highest order. I mean, politicians will know they are lying when they say, “We have to add this health tax on internet usage, because heavy internet use is associated with poor attention in school. We care about the mental health of our children!”

Enjoy the occasional soda pop? No, sir! That’s bad for you. “Waiter, where’s the salt shaker?” “I’m sorry sir. The law won’t allow us to add salt to our food.” Listen to talk radio? That’s bad for your stress level, I’m afraid. The “Fairness” Doctrine will help ease your suffering.

Too much CO₂ in the air leads to adverse global warming, which leads to effects too numerous and too horrible to list. Yet the EPA will give it their best effort: it will take decades to do so. My most novel prediction: the number of miles driven per citizen will be limited, with inspections and fees paid for overages.

Favored political groups—”mascots” as economist Thomas Sowell calls them—women desiring abortions, people who want sex changes, drug addicts, and on and on and on, will find a way to squeeze money out of the government.

I have already speculated how homeopaths and other quack medics will seek protection. Perhaps many thought I was exaggerating. But Friday, Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) in an interview to explain his vote switch with Fox News reporter Neil Cavuto, said that he looks forward to a “whole new way of” medicine. To include, he said, “complementary and alternative” treatments. Just as I predicted.

All these moves will dramatically increase the Gross National Cynicism and increase the antagonism between special interest groups and citizens, further degrading public life.

Your sense of paternalism will increase

I saved the best for last.

Liberty used to be the most important part of life in the States. For those who are not natives, our heated emotion over this topic might seem strange. But recall that our country began with a provocation infinitely smaller; a trivial tax, which would have been far cheaper to pay for than any rebellion.

We saw it as a question of who would be allowed to decide our fate. We did not want to be dictated to from on high. We wanted to be left alone.

But no more. Increasingly, people see “government” as something other than themselves. They see “government” as an entity that somehow exists independently and can be called upon to fix all ills, even personal ones. Resources appear like magic.

People will not be as quick to think that they or their families can take care of themselves. They will more often go to the government and asked to be looked after.

And they will be.

Read Part I

Update For those who doubt the “every aspect of life” prediction: don’t forget this country once lost its mind with alcohol, even to the extent of modifying the Constitution. What happened before can happen again.

Obamacare Predictions: Part I

Published by Briggs at 5:17 am

Your insurance costs will increase

Democrats are ever lamenting that those with pre-existing conditions have difficulty finding insurance. Obamacare mandates that insurance companies “cover” these people.

Mandating “coverage” of those who have are known to have maladies translates to mandating that insurance companies decrease profits, perhaps to the point that they are guaranteed to lose money.

I have tried many times to show that insurance is a bet. You are betting you will get sick and the insurer is betting you won’t. If you do get sick, the insurer pays. If you don’t, you pay. This bet is remade monthly. If you bet you’ll get sick and you already are, you are, in effect, cheating. The insurer has to pay and there is no way that the money you give him will make up for his loss.

That means that mandating insurers “cover” those who are guaranteed to win their bets—those with pre-existing conditions—necessarily increases companies’ costs.

Those costs will be passed along in two ways: to you (possibly through your employer), and to the employees of the insurer. Insurance companies profits—now hovering at 3 to 4 percent—must drop. There is a real danger that small insurers will fail.

This will lead to the direct opposite of the what was intended: when these small insurers fail, people will lose coverage. They will be able to find new coverage, but from larger companies with higher rates.

This new crop of “insurance homeless” will provide leverage for “progressives” to suggest, and probably win, complete government control of health.

Your health costs will increase

Your insurance costs are guaranteed to rise. Note carefully: as just shown, this is certain to happen. It is not merely probable, but inevitable. This is true even if you believe Obamacare is a good idea and that people with pre-existing conditions should be “covered.”

That euphemism is misleading: they are not “covered.” What really happens is that their health costs are subsidized by everybody else.

You or your employer will face higher insurance premiums. Thus, the extent of your coverage will be shrunk. To keep costs down, you will see higher deductibles, lower limits on payouts and such forth.

The costs of insurance paid by your employer will be offset by either cutting pay, reducing future raises, or most likely by hiring fewer workers in the future. That later will be especially true of large employers.

Small- and medium-sized companies will hire fewer people, too. While the influence of any one company is small, the effect in aggregate will be large. Small- and medium-sized business will either have to pay for insurance or pay a penalty for not buying it. So will individuals (it’s now just under $500 per year).

Businesses but not individuals will be offered a tax incentive offset. This tax incentive will be whittled away slowly and surely.

Since most businesses will hire fewer, or they will cut payrolls, or not increase them, tax revenues to the government will decrease.

Your taxes will increase

The government will expand. Obamacare will create a massive new bureaucracy, which will suck funds from the public teat.

Taxes are already guaranteed to increase to pay for many of Obamacare’s provisions: this is in the bill. But they will increase more than estimated because the bureaucracy must be fed. All experience shows that bureaucracies grow fatter in time, consuming more tax dollars as they do so. There has never been an instance in history where this was not so. Health bureaucracies especially grow quickly.

Because payroll and income tax revenue will decrease, because businesses will hire fewer and pay existing employees less, and because small- and medium-sized business are initially allowed a tax incentive, the deficit will increase at a faster rate.

Since you will have less money, you will spend less, and this will have its normal effects.

Social security revenues, for the first time this year, fell below payouts. With our inescapable demographics, this trend is guaranteed to continue. Congress has also stolen a massive amount of money from the Social Security trust fund.

Couple to this the situation of Medicare, and the deficit due will soar to, as Mr Obama likes to say, “unprecedented” levels.

Incidentally, the majority of the so-called savings to the deficit to the Obamacare bill are made by the government takeover of student loans. This measure was tacked onto health care so that the House could cheat and use reconciliation to pass the Obamacare. And so are a host of—so far unknown—additions to the House reconciliation “fix” package (which the Senate might not pass).

Lastly, for the first five years people and businesses pay the new tax but receive almost none of the new entitlements. Those start after year five, when costs begin to escalate. This appalling accounting trick means that after about fifteen years, health care will run a magnificent deficit on its own.

Taxes must increase at a dramatic rate.

A side effect will the creation of more “poor” people: I mean, “poor” people will become a larger percentage of the population because of the cuts in pay and in employment. Since these poor are the ones receiving “free” or reduced-cost health care, government payouts (and deficits) will be vastly larger than estimated. I’d say, after fifteen years, about twice what was estimated.

History is on the side of this prediction: it has happened with every entitlement

Misguided Priorities

The Latest Batch...

American Tyrants

The Constitution Killers

From Mary In Wisconsin...Being Poor Does Not Mean That You Stop Using Your Brains

TEN POOREST CITIES--ALL RUN BY LIBS AND ELECTED BY LIBS.  GOOD LUCK!!

               TEN POOREST CITIES

City, State, % of People Below the Poverty Level
1.  Detroit ,  MI	32.5%
2.  Buffalo ,  NY	29..9%
3.  Cincinnati ,  OH	27.8%
4.  Cleveland ,  OH	27.0%
5.  Miami ,  FL	26.9%
5.  St. Louis ,  MO	26.8%
7.  El Paso ,  TX	26.4%
8.  Milwaukee ,  WI	26.2%
9.  Philadelphia ,  PA	25.1%
10.  Newark ,  NJ	24.2%

U.S. Census Bureau, 2006 American Community Survey, August 2007

 

What do the top ten cities

(over 250,000) with the highest

poverty rate all have in common? 


Detroit,  MI (1st on the poverty rate list) hasn't elected a Republican mayor since 1961.

Buffalo,  NY (2nd) hasn't elected

a Republican mayor since 1954.

Cincinnati ,  OH (3rd) hasn't elected a Republican mayor since 1984.

Cleveland ,  OH (4th) hasn't elected a Republican mayor since 1989.

Miami ,  FL (5th) has never had

a Republican mayor.

St. Louis ,  MO (6th) hasn't elected a Republican mayor since 1949.

El Paso ,  TX (7th) has never had

a Republican mayor.

Milwaukee ,  WI (8th) hasn't elected a Republican mayor since 1908.

Philadelphia , PA (9th) hasn't elected a Republican mayor since 1952.

Newark ,  NJ (10th) hasn't elected a Republican mayor since 1907.

Einstein once said, 'The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.'


It is the poor who habitually elect Democrats
 yet they are still POOR!

 

"You cannot help the poor
by destroying the rich.

You cannot strengthen the weak
by weakening the strong.
You cannot bring about prosperity

by discouraging thrift.
You cannot lift the wage earner up
by pulling the wage payer down.

You cannot further the brotherhood of man

by inciting class hatred.
You cannot build character and courage
by taking away people's initiative and independence.

You cannot help people permanently

by doing for them,
what they could and
should do for themselves."
Abraham Lincoln

And...Mr. Obama, you are no Abe Lincoln!

America: 4 July 1776-21 March 2010

This Was Good...Thanks To Lorraine In Wisconsin

The other day I needed to go to the emergency room.  Not wanting to sit there for 4 hours, I put on my old Army fatigues and stuck a patch onto the front of my shirt 
that I had downloaded off the Internet. 
When I went into the E.R., I noticed that 3/4 of the people got up and left.  I guess they decided that they weren't that sick after all.  Cut at least 3 hours off my waiting time. Here's the patch.  Feel free to use it the next time you're in need of quicker emergency service.

It also works at DMV. It saved me 5 hours.

At the Laundromat, three minutes after entering, I had my choice of any machine, most still running. 
Don't try it at McDonald's though.....

The whole crew got up and left and l never got my order...

Don't You Mean A Black Hole?

Discovery Announcement ~ The densest element in the known Universe has been found!

Pelosium:

A major research institution has just announced the discovery of the densest element yet known to science.  The new element has been named Pelosium.  Pelosium has one neutron, 12 assistant neutrons, 75 deputy neutrons, and 224 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 311.

These particles are held together by dark forces called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called peons.

The symbol of Pelosium is PU.

Pelosium's mass actually increases over time, as morons randomly interact with various elements in the atmosphere and become assistant deputy neutrons within the Pelosium molecule, leading to the formation of isodopes.

This characteristic of moron-promotion leads some scientist to believe that Pelosium is formed whenever morons reach a certain quantity in concentration.  This hypothetical quantity is referred to as Critical Morass.

When catalyzed with money, Pelosium activates CNNadnausium, an element that radiates orders of magnitude more energy, albeit as incoherent noise, since it has half as many peons but twice as many morons as Pelosium.

Another Piece Of Childhood...Gone

Confessions of a coonskin cap kid: R.I.P. Davy Crockett aka Fess Parker, 1924-2010

March 19, 2010

As a self-confessed coonskin-cap-wearer (tail snapped on), we momentarily set aside our health-threatening talk about healthcare to fulfill a sentimental obligation to a childhood icon, Davy Crockett.

Crockett, who also used the non-cinematic name of Fess Parker, died of natural causes Thursday at the age of 85.

The problem for many of us is that we cannot separate Davy and Fess or vice versa. Nor, frankly, do we want to. Sure, Fess went on to a successful business career and grew grapes and hotels. But he'll always also be Davy. The link to politics here is that Davy actually served time in Congress, 1826-1835, back before the U.S. House of Representatives consisted of two partisan herds.

Yes, yes, the 6-foot-6 Parker later played Daniel Boone with the trademark hat. But for the first American generation to grow up with television, the fact was Parker looked and acted more like Davy Crockett than Davy Crockett himself (see drawing).

Parker's mid-fifties portrayal of the legendary frontier figure (1786-1836) repeated the lessons that contemporary fathers were then attempting to instill in the minds of millions of baby-boomers.

In the days before Bart Simpson became a reverse role model, Davy held that you always said what you meant, meant what you said and went down swinging for what you believed in. Twenty-first century corner-cutting deal-making was not actually an option.

Davy was in the Tennessee militia, rising to the rank of colonel, and then entered the state legislature in 1821 before riding off to Washington like a prehistoric Mr. Smith packing saddlebags full of common sense.

But, turns out, Davy had different talking points than another Tennessean, President Andrew Jackson.

Davy particularly didn't like Jackson's Indian Removal Act of 1830, which was basically a land grab that resulted in the forcible eviction of tens of thousands of Indians from Southern and Eastern lands and their removal to the West. Davy didn't rightly see that as fair, seeing as how the Indians were there first and thought they had a bargain with the U.S. government and all.

For his outspoken opposition to the White House and because Indian rights were not a priority among white voters, Davy was defeated in 1834 and stormed off to Texas to join its Revolution. He died at the Alamo soon after, either swinging an empty Old Betsy at Mexican troops or, according to another version, while enduring later torture.

Eighty-eight years later Fess was born in the then-state of Texas and grew up in San Angelo, only 200 miles from the Alamo. He joined the Marines in World War II to become a pilot but was deemed too tall. He graduated on the G.I.Bill as a history major from the University of Texas and traveled to California to pursue acting.

After his short TV career, Parker disappeared from the entertainment world, becoming a real estate developer in and around Santa Barbara. Later he started his own winery. Thursday afternoon moments after talking with assembled family, he died peacefully in his own home, as if it was scripted.

It was the 84th birthday of his wife of 50 years, Marcella.

It was also 174 years and 13 days after the other Davy died in San Antonio.

-- Andrew Malcolm

How To Tell If It's A Liberal At 50 Paces

16 Attributes of Liberalism and Obama

1) Refusal to accept personal responsibility.

2) Think always in terms of 'Collectivism' rather than Individualism.

3) Never measure their solutions for progress or success or lack of success.

4) Never think about possible 'Collateral Damage' caused by their solutions.

5) Never plan ahead for possible errors in their solutions.

6) Repeat the same solutions over and over, even though theyhave failed throughout history every time tried.

7) Reduce every failed solution to a lack of money and the failed solution will work if funds are increased,

8) More interested in making History, rather than learning from History.

9) Loves Humanity but despises those who makeup Humanity.

10) Always focuses on 'Process rather than Progress'.

11) Always trying to save others with the implied attitude they need no improvement personally.

12) They do not want the same rights and protections for every American Citizen; they want 'Special Rights' for certain 'Collectives'.

13) They see America as oppressive rather than freedom giving.

14) Anyone who is successful accomplished that success by oppressing others.

15) There should be equal outcomes disregarding individual choices and actions.

16) Against the idea of inalienable rights and defenders of alienable rights granted by fiat of Government (only if they are in power).

Piss On It!!!

The IRS Needs To Go Away...

Disbanded, Disappear...We need a flat tax that will make Everyone pay a fair share...including the so called "poor".

Bob Shallit: IRS visits Sacramento carwash in pursuit of 4 cents

bshallit@sacbee.com

PUBLISHED SATURDAY, MAR. 13, 2010

It was every businessperson's nightmare.

Arriving at Harv's Metro Car Wash in midtown Wednesday afternoon were two dark-suited IRS agents demanding payment of delinquent taxes. "They were deadly serious, very aggressive, very condescending," says Harv's owner, Aaron Zeff.

The really odd part of this: The letter that was hand-delivered to Zeff's on-site manager showed the amount of money owed to the feds was ... 4 cents.

Inexplicably, penalties and taxes accruing on the debt – stemming from the 2006 tax year – were listed as $202.31, leaving Harv's with an obligation of $202.35.

Zeff, who also owns local parking lots and is the president of the Midtown Business Association, finds the situation a bit comical.

"It's hilarious," he says, "that two people hopped in a car and came down here for just 4 cents. I think (the IRS) may have a problem with priorities."

Now he's trying to figure out how penalties and interest could climb so high on such a small debt. He says he's never been told he owes any taxes or that he's ever incurred any late-payment penalties in the four years he's owned Harv's.

In fact, he provided us with an Oct. 22, 2009, letter from the IRS that states Harv's "has filed all required returns and addressed any balances due."

IRS spokesman Jesse Weller isn't commenting "due to privacy and disclosure laws."

Zeff says he's as offended as much as anything else by what he considers rude behavior by the IRS guys. While at Harv's, he sniffs, "they didn't even get a car wash."

'Toons From A Conservative In Durand, Wisconsin...

The End Game Of Liberals, Progressives, Marxists, Socialists, Commies...Aren't They All The Same???

The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism. But under the name of 'liberalism' they will adopt every fragment of the Socialist program, until one day America will be a Socialist nation, without knowing how it happened. - Norman Thomas [1884-1968] six-time U.S. Presidential candidate for the Socialist Party of America

From The "Stu Blog" 12Mar10

Obama gaffe gets retroactively dumber

So, we all remember this super-super classic…don’t we?  It’s worth watching again…

“Everybody knows that it makes no sense that you send a kid to the emergency room for a treatable illness like asthma, they end up taking up a hospital bed, it costs, when, if you, they just gave, you gave them treatment early and they got some treatment, and a, a breathalyzer, or inhalator, not a breathalyzer. I haven’t had much sleep in the last 48 hours.”

Up until now, this has been funny just because of the supposedly brilliant President butchering the language. It’s also been used as a prime piece of evidence in the “imagine if George W. Bush did this” file.

Today, it gets retroactively worse.

Forget about the speaking problems here for a second, and think about what he’s actually saying. It’s one of many times he’s made the case that unneeded trips to the emergency room are a major factor in the high cost of health care. Fortunately for us, and unfortunately for him—somebody took the time to look into it:

E.R. care represents less than 3 percent of healthcare spending, only 12 percent of E.R. visits are non-urgent, and the majority of E.R. patients are insured U.S. citizens, not uninsured, illegal immigrants.

So, if we were to completely eliminate non-urgent E.R. visits (which of course would be completely impossible), you’re looking at a savings of around 0.4% of health care spending. It’s actually less than that, because I’m not accounting for the higher relative cost of urgent visits, useful non-urgent care in off-hours, or the fact that most of the care is for the insured—but I’m feeling really generous.

Also, Massachusetts has shown us that Obama style health care doesn’t work to lighten the load on our emergency rooms. Even though easing the burden and costs of the E.R. was used as a main selling point for universal health care in Massachusetts—there has been a significant increase in both the number of E.R. visits and overall E.R. costs since its implementation.

It’s enough to make you reach for your breathalyzer…or….inhalator. Sorry, I haven’t had too much sleep in the last 15 months or so.

A Missive From The Golden State

Yo Victor-

Long time no talk, figure I'll pass along some CA political news and observations.  I wrote a piece or two of this a couple weeks or so back, then started hearing the media pick up on some of it-

About the Toyota unintended acceleration- apparently the fault IS NOT logged in memory.  Another big engineering oops.  But hey, congress is busy grilling the head of the company, I'm sure our elected officials will get to the bottom of it.  NOT.  So, we make the "competition" (to Government Motors, anyway) come before us and tell us about their product and bash them and generally embarrass the head of a Japanese company.  This was a massive insult to them culturally, and for the equivalent of 2 deaths per year...(the number of fatalities divided by the years in question).  Not to downplay the loss of human life but, put it in perspective.  The federal CAFE (corporate average fuel economy) standards are responsible for orders of magnitude more deaths; the mandated smaller/lighter cars have resulted in lots more highway fatalities.  But, the engineering folks should definitely sort this out.  Drive by wire has more/worse failure modes and mitigating these should be job one.  I'm sure Ford/GM/etc have had similar failures (even if one in a zillion).  I want to see some perspective here.

Here's something that will make you choke on your Wheaties.  I heard the other day that there are over 10,000 retired CA state workers that are drawing $100,000 or more in retirement.  Yearly income.  Not from risk-taking investments, supplemental income, or IRAs but, from their state government retirement.  DMV, lotto workers, fish and game, CHP, DOJ, that idiotic CA air resources board, department of who the hell knows what, not sure of the make-up of the statistic, but it is irrelevant.  The sheer numbers speak for themselves.  That's over a billion yearly just for one partial group of retirees...(numerical aside: But hey, the way BHO and Queen Pelosi keep throwing around these huge numbers at the federal level, perhaps we've become numb to them; proof- within the past couple days, NBC erroneously reported on air the health care bill cost at 900 trillion, and they didn't correct the mistake, they meant 900 billion, off by three orders of magnitude).

As the saying goes, not bad work if you can get it.  Problem is, it's a ponzi scheme.  Vallejo CA (about 25 miles north of here near the top of the San Francisco bay) already went bankrupt years ago. The police and firefighter union-negotiated contracts had enormous retirement packages that broke the city.  A few months back, Swartzenegger, in one of his occasional attempts at reconciling CA's budget problems, mandated state workers take every other Friday off without pay.  Personally, I would have fired 50% of them, but what he did was a reasonable measure.  I sure as hell didn't notice any loss in service (hint-efficiency goes up if the bureaucrats stay home).  Anyways, they sued and the court ruled in their favor, and they are now due back-pay, probably with interest.  And I think the housing/financial crisis is a pregnant IED that has yet to come to term.  I could keep going with specific examples but, I don't want to get carried away.

My aren't I the cheery guy.  But these are just observations of reality.  And what happens in CA has substantial effect on the nation.  BTW-later I heard on John Bachelor's program the CA numbers are either >$150k x 10k or >$100k x 15k (ie worse).  And now the average government job pays 35% more than private sector-used to be government jobs paid less for better security and better pension than private industry.  Now private industry has virtually no one offering pensions, WAY less security (layoffs everywhere), and less pay on top of it.

SB

Maybe Not "Thriving", But...

Poem Found On Eddie O'Hare...The Father Of Butch O'Hare

The clock of life is wound but once
And no man has the power
To tell just when the hands will stop
At late or early hour.
Now is the only time you own.
Live, love, toil with a will.
Place no faith in time.
For the clock may soon be still.


Capone Mob Murder, World War II Hero
Figure In Naming of O'Hare Airport.

Their tickets and their luggage tags read ORD. They come by the thousands, hour after hour, day after day, flying into the concrete and steel and glass monster that's never quite finished, that's always under construction, always expanding, always overflowing.

Chicago's O'Hare International Airport, even in the midst of a major recession, remains The World's Busiest, as O'Hare boosters never tire of telling us.

And it is pretty busy. Ask the people who get lost there. Ask the homeowners in Des Plaines or Bensenville who live beneath the glide paths. Ask the cabbies who scratch out a living hauling warm bodies and their luggage to and from.

Back in the days when Super Mobster Alphonse Capone was losing control of his sprawling criminal empire and was preparing for his trip to Alcatraz on an income tax evasion conviction, a much smaller version of the airport, then known as Orchard Depot, was just beginning to spread its wings. In those days, most travelers took the train, and international travelers went by ship. And anyway, Chicago's big airport was Municipal, out on the South Side - now known as Midway.

Then as now, you had to really love flying to want to fly into or out of ORD.

In 1949, six years after he went down near Tarawa Island in the South Pacific, Orchard Depot was renamed O'Hare International Airport, in memory of Navy Lt. Cmdr. Edward Henry (Butch) O'Hare.

Butch O'Hare, born in St. Louis and raised on Chicago's South Side, was the affable, charming, pleasant-faced son of Edward J. O'Hare, wheeler-dealer millionaire lawyer, federal informant and partner-in-crime of Scarface Al Capone.

In a very real sense, Scarface Al, through his close involvement in the life and sudden death of the senior O'Hare, was Butch's Godfather. At the time the airport was named for the younger O'Hare, the Capone connection was even then beginning to be lost and forgotten - preserved only in the yellowing newspaper clips that almost no one ever read anymore.

The day after Pearl Harbor—December 7, 1941, or 50 years ago this month—the then-28- year-old Lt. O'Hare was pulled from the arms of his beautiful young bride and their infant daughter, uprooted from their lodgings at the U.S. Naval Training Center in San Diego, California, and sent west to the shooting war in the Pacific.

Butch O'Hare had graduated from the Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland, four years earlier in the summer of 1937. He had spent that first tour of duty honing his skills as a Navy fighter pilot training out of bases in both Florida and California. Before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, career Naval officers like Lt. O'Hare were part of a lonely crowd, generally shunned by a pacifist population that solidly re-elected President Franklin D. Roosevelt on his pledge to keep the country out of war.

But after Pearl Harbor, the Butch O'Hares of the country were suddenly in great demand. About ten weeks after the "day of infamy," as Roosevelt called the Pearl Harbor attack, Lt. O'Hare was flying his single-engine Grumman F4F fighter in the area of the Gilbert Islands.

O'Hare, accompanied by a wingman in another Grumman Hellcat, spotted nine Japanese twin-engine bombers zeroing in on O'Hare's floating home base, the aircraft carrier Lexington. At that crucial moment, only O'Hare and his wingmate were aloft. The rest of the Lexington's fighters were aboard the carrier refueling and reloading, with the enemy bombers only about four minutes from their target.

Then, O'Hare and his buddy discovered that the .50 caliber machine guns in the second Grumman had jammed, leaving only Lt. Butch O'Hare between the airborne assassins and the 2,000 or so Navy men on the Lexington.

But this was a guy who grew up on the South Side of Chicago. This was a guy whose father had friends in the Mafia. This was a guy who knew everything there was to know about firearms - and how to use them.

One at a time, Butch O'Hare flew at the heavily armed incoming killers, and one at a time, he began killing them off. In just seconds, the Japanese squadron was in disarray, with Butch sweeping up from below to within 20 or 30 yards of a bomber, then stitching its fuel tanks with machine-gun fire, causing it to explode in flames, then peeling off to attack the next enemy plane from above, opening fire at a range close enough to see terror in the eyes of a Japanese pilot as he gets shot to death.

All told, O'Hare destroyed five of the nine invaders, with three more being killed by Lexington pilots who were able to take off after O'Hare first engaged the bombers. The last Japanese plane, badly damaged in the shootout with O'Hare, was able to get out of the immediate area, but is believed to have crashed at sea some distance away.

For his inspiring exploits on that fatal day in February 1942, Lt. Edward H. (Butch) O'Hare was designated the U.S. Navy's first "Ace" of World War II. He was immediately promoted two grades from Lieutenant Junior Grade to Lieutenant Commander.

The airborne shootout took place within sight of hundreds of Lexington crew members. O'Hare was being fired on with machine guns and cannons from all angles, but he "just kept moving," one eyewitness report says.

"O'Hare didn't give the Japs a chance," his commander later said of the dogfight. "He just outnumbered them."

President Roosevelt called Lt. O'Hare's outstanding performance, "One of the most daring, if not the most daring, single action in the history of combat aviation." Years later, when Chicago's Orchard Depot airport was renamed for Butch O'Hare, President Roosevelt's glowing tribute was engraved on a plaque and included in an exhibit that stood for years in the International Terminal.

Butch O'Hare's singular exploits did not stop with the Lexington defense. Later in 1942 and in 1943, he acquitted himself brilliantly in developing new techniques for intercepting and destroying enemy aircraft at night. He subsequently earned the Distinguished Flying Cross for these efforts.

But on November 26, 1943, while on a night interception near Tarawa, Butch O'Hare was shot down and lost at sea.

His chaplain, Lt. Cmdr. Donald Kelly of Chicago said of him:

"Butch O'Hare was very enthusiastic about his wife and baby girl (who was not yet two years old when he died). He was a real hero. He was tops with both enlisted men and officers."

The Butch O'Hare story was inspiring enough to prompt some 200,000 Chicagoans to turn out for the 1949 renaming of the airport, including then-Chicago Mayor Martin H. Kenelly and then-Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson. There were bands and speeches and overhead, a lone, smoke-equipped aircraft spelled out the name "O'Hare" in block letters emblazoned against a clear blue sky.

But it could not have happened that way had it not been for the corrupt, tawdry and openly criminal life and death of Butch O'Hare's father.

Edward J. O'Hare, originally of St. Louis, was a young lawyer on the make when he ran into a local inventor and dog lover named Oliver P. Smith. In 1909, Smith had developed a mechanical rabbit for use in dog racing. For the next decade, Smith refined his invention and finally, after hooking up with O'Hare, got the device patented.

Smith and O'Hare showed the running-rabbit system around the country, just as the sport of dog racing was capturing the public's imagination. The pair's early successes came in Florida, Massachusetts and Illinois. Without exception, the people who were opening dog tracks in those days were Mob guys who willingly paid Smith and O'Hare a percentage of the gate for their use of the rabbit.

The inventor died in 1927 and O'Hare, who was, after all, a lawyer, aced Smith's widow out of the picture and gained complete control of the rights to the rabbit for himself. At about that same time, O'Hare shed his wife and took his three children, Butch and his sisters Patricia and Marilyn, with him to Chicago.

Scarface Al Capone took an immediate liking to Eddie O'Hare and brought him into the newly-created Hawthorne Kennel Club as a major partner. Dog racing, then as now, was illegal in Illinois. Nevertheless, Capone, O'Hare and several top Mob characters operated the Hawthorne plant (located in Cicero) while they kept the legality vs. illegality question tied up in court for several years.

Also, the dog-loving team of Al and Eddie took their show on the road, gaining control of a Boston-area track and two plants in Florida. The scam aspect of dog racing—which is what obviously appealed to Capone, if not also to O'Hare—was as easy to carry off as throwing a dog a bone.

The races were usually made up of eight greyhounds chasing the mechanical rabbit around a half-mile track. The dogs were trained to break from a starting gate which was actually a line of eight individual kennels, or boxes, with wire-mesh fronts that snapped out of the way the instant the rabbit started to run. Reaching speeds of 40 miles an hour or so, the dogs would sprint after the mechanical rabbit, never catching it, with the first greyhound across the finish line being the winner, the second grabbing the place payoff and the third animal coming in to show.

Betting was done according to the pari-mutual system, which is the same plan used at horse and dog tracks around the country today. But what turned the sport into the money- generating scam that it was for Capone and O'Hare were the twin facts that (1) dog racing was unregulated at the time and (2) if you give each of seven dogs a pound of hamburger a few minutes before a race, it's a cinch that the eighth, unfed dog will win.

It should take no stretch of the imagination to figure out which dogs Scarface and Eddie and their criminal associates were betting on in those days.

Eventually, dog racing in Illinois was determined to be unequivocally illegal and the Capone- O'Hare combine had to shut down the Hawthorne Kennel Club operation, although they continued to run dogs in the Boston, Miami and Tampa areas.

But, almost overnight, they turned the shuttered Hawthorne Kennel Club into Sportsman's Park Race Track and began to run thoroughbred horses where once greyhounds had chased Oliver Smith's running rabbit. Never mind the fact that Sportsman's was right next door to Hawthorne Race Course which, for 40 years at that time, had also been running thoroughbreds.

If one horse-racing facility was good for Cicero, Capone and O'Hare evidently figured, two would be twice as good.

Edward J. O'Hare was named president of the new Sportsman's Park racing plant.

In addition to running Sportsman's, O'Hare performed a variety of legal services for Scarface Al and various members of the Capone Mob. He was always right around the edges of the ever-present political fix. He looked after the murder, gambling and prostitution busts that assorted Capone guys were always getting themselves into. He became deeply involved in setting up elaborate real estate and stock transactions for Capone, himself and other insiders of the gang.

Along the way, Eddie O'Hare developed both a friendship and a real estate partnership with a Chicago Rackets Court Judge named Eugene J. Holland. Just as an indicator of the kind of guys O'Hare ran with, in one 15-month period, Judge Holland dismissed gambling charges against 12,624 defendants, while finding only 28 guilty.

But where Edward J. O'Hare may have been the personification of the corrupt lawyer, he was a doting father whose love for his offspring knew no bounds. His daughters were raised as if they were some kind of Irish-American Princesses. And for his son, Butch, there was nothing that he would not and could not do.

Educationally, it was only the best schools of the day for Butch. Recreationally, the senior O'Hare always found time to spend time with his son, whether it was at a sporting event or a poetry reading or a theatrical production or just shooting cans off the back fence with a six- shot .38.

In conversation, the senior O'Hare's favorite phrase seemed to be, "My son, Butch…"

When Butch was about to graduate from high school, he told his father of his burning ambition to go to the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis. If money had been the only problem, Eddie would have dipped into his pocket and sent the boy off to Maryland without a second thought. But, then as now, entry into Annapolis required the blessing of a would-be midshipman's local representative in Congress.

At the time, Al Capone was hot and getting hotter. It was known that the Feds were closing in on him with a unique new form of prosecution based on violations of the Federal income tax statutes. It was also widely known that Capone and Butch O'Hare's dad were deeply involved in a variety of joint enterprises, some criminal and some only quasi-so. What O'Hare knew about Capone's day-to-day criminal activities was the stuff that the typical Federal prosecutor's dreams are made of.

To make that dream a reality, all that was needed was the timely intervention of a St. Louis Post Dispatch reporter who was in the odd position of being both a personal friend of Eddie O'Hare and the best buddy of one of the key people on the prosecution team. The reporter, John Rogers by name, knew that O'Hare wanted very badly to get his young son into Annapolis.

Rogers first went to his pal on the Capone prosecution team, who took the pitch up the line to the Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, who then went to Congress with the plan, which then found its way over to Annapolis, with the word coming back down to Eddie that Butch was in - if only the senior O'Hare would tell everything the Feds wanted to know about Scarface Al Capone.

He did. The Feds made excellent use of the information. Capone went down for 11 years, with the first two years being served behind the bars of the Federal penitentiary in Atlanta, and the rest spent locked up on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay.

In 1937, the year that Butch O'Hare graduated from Annapolis, his father received a piece of mail from an ex-con who had been in Alcatraz with Capone. In simple, declarative sentences, the note read: "Capone is mad. He is enraged. He will kill you."

The senior O'Hare, still President of Sportsman's Park Race Track and a millionaire lawyer with enough horse-racing interests, dog-racing deals, real-estate interests and stock transactions to keep an army of accountants on overtime, began to seem a little nervous, a little distracted, his friends said.

However, Ursula Sue Granata, sister of a Mob-tied State Representative and Eddie O'Hare's seven-year fiancee, denied that he was showing signs of any kind of strain or nervousness. "He entertained ten or twelve friends at a dinner party in the Illinois Athletic Club," she said. "Contrary to some things I have read, I didn't see the least indication that he was nervous," Miss Granata declared.

Eddie and Sue, who were long an item in the gossip columns, never seemed able to get their relationship formalized because his earlier divorce from Butch's mother kept all the Catholic priests in the area from officiating. However, they were hopeful that by about the spring of 1940, their request for a dispensation from the Vatican would come through and they would then be able to marry.

But before that happy day would come, Alphonse Capone, regarded by many as the father of organized crime in America, was due to be released from Alcatraz.

On November 8, 1939, or about 27 months before Lt. Butch O'Hare would save the U.S.S. Lexington, Edward J. O'Hare was seen cleaning and loading a Spanish-made .32-caliber semi-automatic pistol in his office at Sportsman's Park. Although he was known to own several firearms, he was never known to carry a gun.

He left his office that afternoon, got into his black 1939 Lincoln coupe and drove away from the track, heading first north on Cicero and then northeast on Ogden, toward Downtown Chicago. As Eddie O'Hare approached the intersection of Ogden and Rockwell, a car roared up beside him and two shotgun-wielding murderers opened fire with repeated blasts of big- game slugs. The slugs tore through the glass and metal of the Lincoln's door, killing Eddie instantly.

As the Lincoln crashed into a post at the side of the roadway, the killers continued east on Ogden, where they soon became lost in other traffic. As might be expected, they were never found.

In addition to the gun that Eddie O'Hare never had a chance to use, police removed from his pockets a rosary, a crucifix, a religious medallion and a poem clipped from a magazine.