If Monkeys Ran The Zoo

a.k.a My Political Views and Political Rant

Hoo boy. Before we start this, let me go ahead and put my flamesuit on, as my political views are not real popular at the moment. Please feel free to 'flame on', but know that any negative comments will be read, and probably deleted. Constructive criticism, ok, but if you're just being a troll, I don't have time or energy.

My Beatitudes (a.k.a. What Do You Believe):

1. 95% of conspiracies are complete and utter bullshit. 9-11 an inside job? You're buzzed. Iraq war for oil? Nah. 1969 Moon landing a fake? Wow, what planet are YOU living on? Some shadowy Illuminati running the world? You're joking right? Government coverup of UFOs? Sheesh.

2. The President of the United States is NOT infallible. They're human, and prone to human errors. I cut the government slack until they have proven themselves incompetent.

3. My views are MY VIEWS. If you don't like it, well, there are other blogs to read. I respect other peoples' opinions, realizing that their views are theirs.

These statements are subject to change, addition, deletion, or revision for content or grammatical correction at any time, without warning or notification. And now, to the fun stuff:

My social views:

My social views are relatively simple, to me anyway. I firmly believe that any person, or group of people, is fully entitled to their views, beliefs, and quirks, and I have no right to interfere... UNTIL those views, beliefs, and quirks affect ME. For example: If you choose not to own a gun because of some social belief or a religious conviction, good for you. That's great, it's your choice. But if you tell me that you believe it unethical/immoral/unlawful for ME to own a gun, I WILL take exception to it. I take that stance on many social issues, with a few exceptions. Domestic violence, abuse in any form (child, spouse, drug, etc), and the like, I feel to be in the public domain. The abuser forfeited their right to privacy when they started adversely affecting someone else.

My financial views:

I find myself agreeing with both sides of the line here, but my focus is generally more conservative. The answer to all social/economic problems IS NOT to throw more money at it. For example: Inner city schools have the lowest test scores, lowest graduation rate, etc etc etc. The answer is NOT to throw billions of dollars at the school system. PERIOD. No 'efficacy studies', no 'pilot programs', NO. Does it take money to figure out where all the money went? Yes. BUT, a 10-year study that costs $15mil per year to fund (and all of it comes out of the district's funding) is NOT the way to go. Assign some small group locally (preferably a CPA firm), go through the financial records of the schools in question. Teachers making pennies while the administrators are driving Jags? There's your answer. Then, once that imbalance has been corrected (by LOWERING THE ADMINISTRATOR'S SALARIES), the next step can be taken. Where are the schools deficient? No textbooks? Instead of giving the district money to purchase books, have the governing body (state or federal government) purchase the texts in the required quantites for the districts. This accomplishes two things: 1) No opportunity for misappropriation of funds 2) standardization of textbooks throughout the area. Next, look at the appropriation of funds in specific schools. School can't turn out a decent class, but the sports teams are fantastic? Hmm... There's a problem here. Sports are great, yes, BUT the function of a school is to TEACH, not to entertain. Less than .1% of all high-school athletes will get a college scholarship to play sports. Less that 10% of college athletes will make a professional team. BUT, 100% of high-school students need to be able to read, write, and do basic math to function in society. So where are the priorities, really?
Moving on, the rest of my financial views pretty much follow that pattern: eliminate fraud, waste, and abuse. My major beefs with that system are twofold: petroleum processors, and Hollywood. Please find my comments about them in my rant titled "Ultra-Grand Theft".

My view on politicians:

Oh brother. In short, our once-proud governing system is so corrupt at this point, I honestly don't believe that it can be saved in it's current form. We are no longer a nation of Americans, but a huge collection of special-interest groups: the Environmentalists, Capitalists, Pro-Life, Pro-Choice, Pro-Gun, Pro-Safety, whites, blacks, Hispanics. Even the illegal aliens have a special-interest group! Somewhere along the line, the United States populous has been brainwashed into believing that 'me first, me last, me always' really does work. We have been duped into thinking that instead of working to better oneself, demand that your 'voice on Capital Hill' pass legislation benefitting you, often at the expense of others. When did this become OK? Not to mention, as a single white male, I'm SCREWED. I'm ineligible for ANY racial minority, gender-equality program, NOTHING. I have no nation-wide network of pro-bono attorneys, no grassroots movement to 'free whitey', no special support of any kind.
So in short, our political system is junk. It's going to take a massive crisis of some sort to shake the American people out of their torpor, and make them realize that everyone is not in the same situation, nor is 100% equality, regardless of qualification, an acceptable solution. This goes back to my social views. Do what you want, until it affects me. Changing people's viewpoint is not accomplished through legislation, but through education. You want me to 'save the environment?' cool. Why? How is slapping yet another 'emissions-control device' on my Mustang (or on future iterations) going to help? Be prepared for rebuttals, and instead of resorting to mudslinging (i.e. the last Presidential election), come up with some actual, unbiased, science-based proof. If my facts are better than yours, sit down and table it.

Until next time!