End Highway Deaths: Ban Highways!

Yes, the title of this blog IS ridiculous.

But the supposition is correct, is it not? If you really wanted to end ALL highway deaths, the only way you could realistically accomplish that is to get rid if highways. You COULD get rid of cars, I guess. But someone riding a bike or walking on the highway could still get hit and killed.

Why do I bring up this absurd scenario?

Because there is a story today that Scotland is boasting about cutting heart attacks by the HUNDREDS in the first year following its smoking ban.

In fact, heart attacks went down 17% in that first year!

What is the purpose of the report? To justify the ban, of course.

Same way they love doing studies showing that bars and restaurants don't really lose money following smoking bans.

The ends justify the means for these types of people.

Of course heart attacks will go down after criminalizing smoking.

Same way highway deaths will END if you close all highways.

Same way you will stop drunkeness if alcohol were to suddenly disappear.

Sometimes the little inconvenient thing called RIGHTS get in the way of such bans. A REAL inconvenient truth.

There Shouldn't Be a Minimum Wage

Did the title of my blog give you whiplash? Heart palpitations?

I said it. And I believe it. THERE SHOULDN'T BE A MINIMUM WAGE.

Certainly not one set by the government at ANY level.

The Federal minimum wage went up 70 cents to $6.55 an hour yesterday. That would be the second of three increases that went into effect after legislation was passed last year.

Why am I so cruel to the worker making a few bucks an hour? I am not cruel. I am logical. I am a free market champion.

I believe that the only two people who should be involved in payment decisions ought to be the employee and the employer. PERIOD.

If I have a job and it pays $4.00 an hour and you really WANT it, you should be able to take it. And I should be able to hire you. Simple, isn't it?

Contrary to the scare tactics of many, this will not return us to the days of slavery and indentured servitude. Nothing of the sort.

It would simply mean that an employer would pay a worker what they were worth for the job AT HAND, not what the government decided they were worth.

For instance, let's say I own an ice cream shop. I need to hire someone to dip my cones in chocolate. Is that really $6.55 an hour worth of labor?? OF COURSE NOT. I'd say it's worth maybe $3.50 an hour TOPS.

The point is, no one is being forced to dip those cones for me. Chances are it will be enticing for the crowd the minimum wage was INTENDED FOR in the first place--entry level workers and students.

Why should some faceless bureaucrat decide what MY employees are going to earn an hour??

I hate it when I hear people moan, "I can't raise a family of 4 on the minimum wage!"

Of course you CAN'T! You aren't SUPPOSED to! No one ever intended you to raise a family of ANY number on the minimum wage!

The intention was that you would START with an entry level job that paid entry level wages and that you would better yourself and your skill and circumstance and MOVE UP.

This whole wage nonsense is artificially trying to move people up.

So why not be more realistic than $6.55 an hour (some states are actually higher than the Federal benchmark)...you still can't raise a family very well making that kind of money. So why not just get all these workers out of their misery and make the minimum wage $18 an hour? Wouldn't THAT make more sense?

Instead, politicians throw bones at potential or future supporters by giving them the illusion that they have just improved their lives.

Politicians ought to have the guts to ask what I would ask--why are you 45 years old and making less than $7.00 an hour????

Ouch. That was rough. But it was honest. Maybe brutally so. But it's the only truthful question to ask.

Next thing you know our leaders (and probably a sizable number of voters) will propose and support a MAXIMUM WAGE.

Think about it. Tiger Woods shouldn't make so much money on 18 holes or for wearing a cap with a logo on it. Those dirty, rotten CEOs shouldn't be bailing with the golden parachutes they are given. Movie stars shouldn't make millions for a few months work playing "pretend" toentertain us.

So cap the MAXIMUM someone can make! Work hard, study hard, apply yourself to your darnest--and STILL only be able to make a certain dollar amount an hour! $200,000 should be all you can ever hope to make in a year. How's THAT for killing aspirations and dreams.

Hey, it's no more un-American than the minimum wage.

You just probably never thought of it that way.

Motivational Monday: The Book That Inspired "The Secret"

I just finished reading a life changing book written nearly 100 years ago. It has impacted millions of readers through the years, including Rhonda Byrne who is best known as the woman who brought us the film and book called "The Secret"--a bestseller around the world.

The book is THE SCIENCE OF GETTING RICH: FINANCIAL SUCCESS THROUGH CREATIVE THOUGHT by Wallace D. Wattles. It was written in 1910 but it is as timely as ever today in our current state of doom and gloom regarding the economy and our personal state of wealth.

Every politician should read it. Every business leader. Every teacher. Every student. Every American. I paid $6.95 for it in a beautiful Barnes & Noble edition but its value is many times that.

The lessons taught are straight forward and simple for all to understand. The principles are timeless and practical and they WILL work if you apply them and believe they will work.

The basic premise is that your thoughts are things...that they bring things into your life, both good and bad. Your mind is a magnet and it will attract whatever it is you are dwelling on.

Wattles believed, and correctly so, that you cannot dwell and put your focus on poverty and expect to reach prosperous results. You cannot dwell and put your focus on illness and expect to reach healthy results.

Your thoughts and your feelings are always a match. Try driving to work tomorrow thinking awful, earth shattering thoughts of pessimism and see how you feel. I guarantee they will not make you feel good.

Conversely, I can guarantee it will be hard if not impossible for you to feel badly if you are singing your favorite song and thinking wonderful thoughts about your future.

The book is less than 100 pages long and can change your life if you follow its principles and teachings. Go out and buy this book! You owe it to yourself.

Thoughts...are...things. And thoughts...become...things.

So make it your aim to focus less on the bills that have flooded your mailbox and more on the endless supply of abundance that is always at your feet.

It has always been at your feet. You just were too worried dwelling on lack to notice.

That is all going to change. Starting today!

The Kids Aren't OK

We already know that many American schools have banned childhood staples such as tag and dodgeball over the clear and present danger such games pose to children. After all, we are talking about physical AND self esteem injuries should junior take one in the face or always be "it".

Now a story from Britain leads us further down the road of sterilizing everything that was wonderful about being a kid.

Teachers at a primary school dropped plans for a traditional potato sack race over fears that...gasp...the kids might get hurt.

Three-legged races were also dumped, not out of fear of offending four-legged children, but out of fear that...Heavens to Murgatroyd...a little one might trip and fall and skin a knee. OH NO!

A local educational leader explained. "We had to assess which of the activities were liable to cause a risk."

How about waking up in the morning? Opening the front door? Crossing the street. Or even worse--DRIVING to the event!

My kids slip and fall ALL DAY LONG and it's never been as a result of hopping on one foot or sprinting in a potato sack.

KIDS SLIP AND FALL!

We are engineering a generation of kids who don't ever fall. They will turn into adults who have never fallen.

And one day when they do, they will come unhinged.

Stop butchering childhood! Let kids be kids!

Let the potato sack races live on!

In Loving Memory of My Mother

My mother died last Tuesday morning.

Even as I write those words, none of it seems real. It's fiction. It must have happened in a horrible nightmare or to someone else. My mother is still alive and will walk down the stairs of our home any minute now and hug and kiss and love her grandchildren.

She died in intensive care after days of dialysis and heavy life support. She was, according to the doctors and nurses, in a coma the last few days of her life and she didn't suffer, which is one of the few reassurances you can give someone as they watch a loved one die before their very eyes. Another reassurance is that they can still hear the words we whisper into their ears, even if they outwardly don't seem to be registering them.

My mother came to visit us on a Thursday. She came down with flu-like symptoms the next day. And by Saturday morning she was being shuttled by ambulance to intensive care. The following day she was on dialysis as her kidneys had shut down. Sunday night was rough and a tight rope. Monday night showed promise and a glimmer of hope. We all really started believing she was going to pull out of this sudden calamity.

But Tuesday morning at 8am my precious mother left this world. My father and I were there to hold her hand and stroke her forehead and kiss her cheeks. I have never seen my father more broken and I have never cried as intensely for anyone or anything as I did watching my mother having the monitors turned off and her vitals fading forever.

She died with my 8-month-old baby girl's security blanket (a sweet tiger that she would never generally part with) on her chest. She loved all her grandkids, but the joy she experienced with that baby girl was enough to take your breath away.

Our lives were, needless to say, sent into a spiral of confusion, denial, and anger.

How on earth could this happen?? She was FINE one day and sick the next. Then she was taken from us.

The most unnerving part, I think, is when the best medical crews and doctors scratch their own heads and offer little in terms of definite answers. Her body was attacked and ultimately destroyed by a catastrophic infection. It happens, they said. And sometimes there is nothing that our advanced medical technologies can do to stop the wheels from turning down their inevitable end.

What I found the most remarkable about those days and final moments in the hospital was the lack of the sense of urgency and chaos that we have come to know from Hollywood's version of the inside of a hospital.

Even as my beloved mother began to slip away, the doctors and crew spoke calmly and walked about her bed with soft steps.

How could you be so CALM, I remember screaming inside my head as I felt the tears and the horror and the angst coming over me. MY MOTHER IS DYING...HOW CAN YOU WALK SO LIGHTLY??

Maybe it was her age (77) or the fact that they knew ultimately they had done everything they could for her. Maybe they knew it was simply but sadly her time to go.

My mother was a great woman and I wish that you could have known her. Those of you who did know how enriched your lives were just by virtue of knowing her.

She was the most selfless person I ever knew. Nothing was about her. She was always more concerned with the comfort and happiness of others before her own. Such a person is rare, especially in today's world. In this GIMME, GIMME, GIMME world, it's getting harder and harder to find someone who will make sure you are being treated well.

She leaves behind my father, to whom she was married for almost 48 years, myself (her only son), an adoring daughter-in-law, and 6 grandchildren (there was no such thing as STEP grandchildren to her...she loved them all the same and her obituary made no distinction between them...that was how deep her love was), not to mention countless others who will miss her dearly.

I am currently being comforted by my faith and by the words of scholars and experts who continue to remind us that our loved ones never really GO somewhere far away. They are with us even now. We may not be able to hear them or see them or touch them. They are our gentle and unseen companions that never leave our sides as we continue to take our steps through this life.

Forever hoping that we never lose sight of the fact that they are never more than a whisper or a thought or a prayer away.

We bury my mother on Wednesday in a ceremony ultimately designed for the living, not the deceased. We will all look down at the grave as if she is IN it. But she is not. Her earthly body perhaps, yes. But the essence and beauty that was my mother still IS my mother and always will be.

We are better served looking next to us than below us at the ground.

I love you, my sweet mother. You were the most amazing woman I ever knew. I wish I could have had you for more time than I did, but I thank God for the years I was fortunate enough to have. You will always be with me.