WHAT SOULD BE DONE TO PROTECT THE PUBLIC FROM OUR GOVERNMENT

While talking to my daughter I realized that one way the American Public can protect itself from its' government, is to require that all elected politicians drink nothing but NYQUIL all the time. This should effectively keep them inebriated without requiring them to become alcoholics. Once they are permanently inebriated we should be safe from any of their harebrained schemes, since they should be so sloshed they can't stand up long enough to make long winded and pointless speeches. Followed by pointless but surreptitiously dangerous lawmaking. As a side benefit this drinking requirement should also act as a legislative term limiter. After our legislators and politicians, spend enough time drinking NYQUIL they should forget to go to work.

You Have the Right to Be Stuck In Traffic

Some days ago I read a small newspaper article that was a reply to a question about how those Highway On Ramp meters and lights work. It seems that some very smart traffic engineers have spent, what is I assume, a vast amount of the public's money to develop a system that tells drivers already on the on-ramps all around America, that road ahead of them is congested. What the genius traffic engineers didn't do was to place a RED traffic light or a flashing sign that says "Do Not Enter Congested" at the ENTRANCE to the on ramp. That way us dumb drivers, could avoid the congested roadway instead of just getting on, and then finding out the road was blocked or delayed.
This leads me to confirm that the people who design traffic control systems and roadways don't have drivers licenses. Just like the people at GM and CHRYSLER who build cars never drive them.

Collective Bargaining

I just read an article in the AARP magazine about a recent audit of the New Jersey Turnpike Authority. A quasi-government authority that runs the New Jersey Turnpike. According to the article, the audit done by the New Jersey State Treasurer found millions and millions of dollars of wasted salaries and unearned bonuses. And how did the New Jersey Turnpike Authority management deflect the blame for its wastefulness? The management blamed the waste on its collective bargaining agreements. As if the NJTPKE management had not agreed to the wasteful agreements itself.
More and more it seems that when municipal or quasi-government agencies bargain with their unions, the unions get whatever they want, because the management and the unions are bargaining with themselves

Is it just me, or are all the articles written every day just seem to get me, more and more angry.

Y ME

So I board my plane to go back to Portland from LA and take my seat and everything is going fine. We reach 10,000 feet and the Waitress makes her announcement "We have reached 10,000 feet you may use your electronic gadgets and please recline your seats and relax and enjoy the flight." So, I recline my seat and the next thing I know I am being banged in the back of my seat. So, I calmly wait for the banging to stop, and it does not. So, I calmly get up, turn around and say to guy in the seat behind me,"Do you have a problem?" He answers " You Are In My Lap." He doesn't say, yes we have a problem, he doesn't say "please move & don't recline your seat as much", he doesn't say, "yes I have a problem could you please help me." No, my unassigned airplane buddy snarls at me. So, instead of starting a brawl on the plane, with a guy who is at least four feet above the back of his seat, sitting down, which means he will be scrapping the roof of the airplane when he pummels me, after I say anything. So what do I do, I turn around sit down and unrecline my seat, and wonder Y Me.

Random Thoughts

The other day it occurred to me that the smarter the cellphone a person has the dumber the person can be. I was also talking with my daughter and somehow the subject of Japanese World War II interment camps came up.It occurred to me that maybe the real reason for the US Government moving all the West Coast Japanese to interment camps was to ensure an uninterrupted pool of post war Japanese Gardeners.