On the Contrary

Ever pick up the paper and just wonder to yourself why we care about these things anymore?  Or more importantly wonder why we still have laws that waste our time and money enforcing them when the laws are obviously counter-productive?  Ever wonder about how we tie ourselves into knots trying to keep old and antiquated systems in place?  Here are some of my favorites:

• Marijuana – States are trying to figure out how to legally distribute medical marijuana while the federal government continues raids on local dispensaries.  Meanwhile in our National Forests, they are being overrun with marijuana plots.  Ask any kid and he can tell you where to get some so why are we doing this?  When can we move on from these antiquated laws to protect ourselves from ourselves?
• Health Care – The latest is the concern about requiring everyone to have insurance and penalties if they don’t.  This madness comes from trying to maintain the employer based health care system and the insurance industries.  Why not Medicare for everyone with co-pays depending on your ability to pay?  The rest of the world has figured this out and we tie ourselves in knots trying to pound a round peg into a square hole.  It will cost what it costs and the funny thing is we already pay these costs in so many hidden ways from lost wage increases to high hospital rates.
• Reasonable Gun Control – There was a story in the paper Saturday about a Mom who wore a gun to her son’s soccer match (legally) and was shot to death by her husband. Then there are the nuts who think it is a good idea for kids to be armed on college campuses.  Yes, having a gun when a nut-job starts killing indiscriminatingly will reduce the carnage.  But add to that the number of people killed because there was a gun handy when they lost their temper or were drunk and it is not worth the access.  Wild West towns banned guns in the city to reduce the violence.  Did we learn nothing?
• In Your Face Anti-Abortion Activists – I would be the first to defend one’s free speech rights, but standing outside an abortion clinic and harassing women who have chosen this legal procedure is not free speech.  It is intimidation and a strong threat of violence.  It violates their right to privacy in probably one of the most difficult and personal decisions they have to make.  Believing life begins at conception is a religious belief.  Using the same logic and recognizing what we can do with cloning, then scratching off cells is a destruction of life, not to mention that the majority of pregnancies end in miscarriages that no-one even notices.  We have very reasonable laws respecting a woman’s right to choose and what we need more of is anti-anti-abortion activists to stop this intimidation and in some cases terrorist activities because of religious beliefs
• Stupid Immigration Laws – What do you do when you get a letter from the government telling you that a valued employee who has worked for you for 20 years is an illegal alien and you must fire him for face legal proceedings?  You put him/her on the underground economy and the government loses their taxes and fees.  In the agricultural industries jobs go wanting because Americans simply can’t and won’t perform them.  When will we establish a guest worker program that allows these valuable resources to flow back and forth across the border freely and we quit wasting resources trying to enforce laws that are impossible to enforce?  If there are jobs, they will come.
• Gays with Equal Rights – Here is another no-brainer.  When are we going to stop wasting valuable resources trying to persecute gays for being gay?  What do we care what two consenting adults do in the privacy of their bedroom?  Sexual behavior in the workplace, heterosexual or homosexual behavior is inappropriate.  So why can’t we judge people based upon their actions and performance instead of their sexual preferences?  It is time to quit worrying about stupid things like this.
• It’s All About the Unemployment Rate Stupid – When will we understand that our well being is not reflected in the stock market, but in the number of our citizens who have good jobs and can pay their mortgages, send their kids to school, and provide for their retirement?  The stock market will follow and all the rest is fluff.  The stock market has been used as a measure of our economic well-being and it not longer reflects either good economic choices or the wise choice of good investments.  It has simply become a large roulette wheel that the rich play with.  If we recognize that employment is the prime indicator, and the stock market is simply a secondary indicator, we will finally have our priorities right.
• Religion in General – Recently the President of Iran stated that they would have nuclear weapons, God willing.  Many of the issues above are also driven by religious belief.  After the earthquakes and tsunami in Soma, people thanked God for sparing them.  It is all totally illogical and irrational.  If you can thank God for sparing you, can you not hold him accountable for causing the earthquake in the first place?  There is no magic hand of God moving men’s actions, only men.  Life would be a lot simpler if we would just realize that shit happens, and men and women are responsible for how we deal with it.  Note that the religious right wants to rewrite the Bible to get rid of liberal tendencies they perceive in the New Testament.  My feeling is help yourself, since that is what happened in the 3^rd century.  Maybe the Old Testament written by various authors would be more accommodating to their lunacy. It’s all nonsense anyway but it gives everyone something to do beside the really hard work of thinking.

I keep hoping that someday we will become a civilized people who use rational thought to resolve our problems.  So far I have been disappointed.