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The contents of the “Weekly Feature” page are provided
to you for your entertainment, amusement, and perhaps information.
Here you may find articles of interest, pictures, historical information
on the Club, or whatever shuffles to the top of the pile on our
desk. The only defined characteristic of this space is that we
will make every effort to change/replace it around the middle of
each week. Thank you for visiting, and please stop by again. Click
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LOOKING UP
It is just no wonder people don’t know what to think. Every night, you
come home, straddle the chair, load up your plate, and there, just beyond the
meatloaf and mashed potatoes, the nightly news anchor is listing all the plants
that closed that day, tolling the bells for another failed bank, or chronicling
the big sell-off on Wall Street. You can almost bet that the first half of the
news will be devoted to the seemingly unprecedented chaos in our economy. The
new president has marshaled all his supporters on the hill and hammered out a “stimulus” bill,
in hopes of getting the economic train back on the tracks. I’m not sure.
For instance, “Ex-Lax” is a well known “stimulant” too,
but that whole story usually ends up with the phrase, “down the drain”.
Give a hyper active 6 year old another bowl of sugar, and you’re gonna
light him up real bright for a while, then he ends up face down in his mac and
cheese around supper time. Maybe more confidence would be inspired by a “Stability” package.
That’s what seems to be missing. A giant cash infusion, followed by the
realization that it was our “giant cash” in the first place, just
seems to add a little more volatility to an already twitchy, jumpy, panic-stricken
system. Again, not sure.
Equally troubling to some of us out
here in the Heartland, is the fact that many of those hoping to address
the problem seem to
have chosen the arbitrary cutoff
level between the haves and the have-nots at somewhere around the $250K per
annum level. We often hear that figure bandied about as sort of a threshold,
implying
that anyone earning less than that was in a precarious position. Well, color
me bright “precarious”, buddy. Maybe it’s just me, but I’d
like to think the problems appear a lot closer to the ground than that. Perhaps
the yardsticks by which our duly elected representatives measure their constituents
has become a bit warped by prolonged immersion in that endless stream of liquid
assets that we annually pump in their direction. And I don’t think that
basic disconnect is limited to elected types either. For example, in the earlier
stages of this crisis, the 3 corporate CEO’s flew their tin cups to Washington
onboard their luxury private jets. It wasn’t just a small PR mis-calculation,
it didn’t even occur to them how incongruous that might look to the “little
people” out there. Our government bails out faltering financial giants
(you know, the type that will reach across their mahogany desk and push that “Release
the Hounds” button if you are 12 hrs. late with a payment to them) who
then think, “Thank God, now we can reward our greedy, inept, CEO with that
$5M bonus he so richly deserves.” And they do it! And he takes it!! The
disconnect is that complete. Apply that scenario to your life/job/career. Suppose
you decide you can enhance your bottom line by leaving that gasket out of the
fuel supply line on every unit that goes down your assembly line. Then one
day a whole parking lot full of grocery-getters bursts into flame in front
of the
local beauty parlor. Are you really going to be expecting a fat bonus, come
December?? Not so sure about that either.
As always, no solutions available
here, clearly those are only generated well above our pay grade.
Just leaves us with the
lingering question, exactly whose
problems are getting solved here? Just remember, as you struggle along on your
hands and knees, there on the bottom of the food chain, try to be forgiving
of those whose bootprints you feel on your back. They don’t even know you’re
down there. |