Skip to main content

Get your own chickens!

Firemen in Obion County, Tennessee, 
watched a house burn down last week.  
The owner forgot to pay the $75. fee.
They were able to save the farm field next door.
The farmer had paid for fire protection.


Fire protection.
Police protection.
An education.
Health care.
National defense.
Safe medicines.
Safe food.
Parks to play in.
Roads to drive on.
Coordinated air flight.
Water for our homes.
Sewage disposal.
Electrical grids.
Communication services.


Well, what do you think? 


Do you think you should contract individually 
for those services (and many more), or do you
think they should be available to everyone? 


Do you believe people should be on their own,
if they can afford it, or remember to pay the fee,
and if they aren't, let the house burn down?


Is that Ronald Reagan I hear, encouraging us
to stand on our own?  To be strong?  Rebuild the house?
Maybe pay the $75. next time, if you have it?
He advised us once, to dig a hole in the back yard
in the event of a nuclear attack, and pull an old door 
over the top.   Do-it-yourself nuclear defense!


All the noise coming from conservatives and Tea Party people
is hole-in-the-backyard defense.  Do it all yourself!  Quit paying
taxes!  Get a gun, go to Idaho, and damn the torpedoes!


Get rid of the Education Department!  Get rid of public schools!
Trade chickens for health care!  Send witches and warlocks 
and people who hate government to run the government!


Cut off unemployment benefits!  
Get rid of Social Security!
Quit building public rail transportation!
Turn the health of the nation over to insurance companies!
Let private companies discriminate if they want to (Ron Paul).
(Ron Paul, personally, of course, says he personally
would not do that, of course.  Purely personally.)


If you are afraid of salmonella, quit buying eggs! 
Or get your own chickens!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Friends-- My step-father of 35 years died this morning. His name was Conrad Royksund. He was 86 years old. He was born into poverty on a farm near Puyallup, WA. He was the first member of his family to attend college and earned a PhD from the University of Chicago. He paid his way through all of that by fishing in Alaska. He spent his professional career as a college professor. I met him when I was just 3 years old and don't actually have any memories of my life befor e he was in it. He was intimidatingly smart, funny as hell, and worked his ass off. He taught me to meet people with kindness and decency until I was certain they could not be trusted. He taught me to meet ideas with carving knives until I was certain they could. I will remember him as one of the bravest, most curious, and funniest people I have ever met. He left this world with a satisfied mind. We are so grateful. Dan Hubbard
1 comment
Read more

Caliche Busters and Government Work

When I was young and both stronger and smarter than I am now, I put my might and brain to work doing nothing useful, unless it might be thought that hand/foot/eye coordination might come in handy.  Those were skills to be learned and practiced.   I found an iron bar our grandfather had shaped in his blacksmith shop.  He took old car, truck, or wagon axles, and made tools from them for digging post holes.  He sharpened one end to a tip, and the other to a blade.  Washington State, like many places, had a hard layer of soil, probably created by water and limestone, or some such materials, that made digging holes a miserable chore.  The bar chipped through the natural concrete so that a shovel could take it up.   I found Grandpa's iron bar, and since I was young and dumb and strong--or so I thought--decided to punch a hole down to hardpan and ultimate truth.  I knew how to do that.  Raise the bar vertically with both hands, and then slam in straight down.  On the second try, aimi
Post a Comment
Read more

The Sea is Rising

Let us just step back:  two hundred and fifty years ago, or so, the ships of England and Spain had drifted onto a whole new continent, as they saw it, from far north to a savagely cold south; pole to pole, as if there were such things. Millions of people already lived here, some of them still hunters and gatherers; some of them very wealthy, indeed!  Gold and silver stolen from the southern Americas funded Spanish and English dreams. There was land, lots of land, under starry skies above, rich land, and oil and coal and iron ore.  The whole western world learned how to build industries not on simple muscle power, but on steam and oil.  We farmed, too, of course.  All we needed was cheap labor--slave labor from Africa, mostly, so the ships came with slave labor.  Chinese labor built railroad beds where there had been rock cliffs. Europeans, long used to killing each other for good, religious reasons, brought their religious savagery with them.  Even when all they wanted to do w
Post a Comment
Read more