Keep on Rockin' In The Free World!

When Operation Desert Storm began in January of 1991, I was a senior in high school. I can remember well, it was a Monday night, and my parents sent me up to the Erickson's Super Valu in Maple Grove, MN, to buy milk. I'm pretty sure it was the week before the Super Bowl.
In any case, on my way there, in my mom's 1989 sweet Cadillac SedanDeVille, I was listening to KQRS, and the song, "Keep On Rockin' In The Free World," by Neil Young came on. In the middle of the song, with no warning, KQ interrupted the song for the speech by the original President Bush. He announced that the "liberation of Iraq" had begun. The irony of that song being played at the time would not hit me for many years, but the immediacy of that moment is hard to forget.
When I returned home, the new "war" dominated the family conversation. I don't remember if we talked about it that night, but in the days that followed, at school, there was a very real strange fear, that all of us could be drafted and sent to the gulf. I can remember a sense of urgency to complete my college choice plans, because if I didn't, it was possible, that if the war escalated, that I could be drafted and sent to the gulf.
Quite obviously now, there never was going to be a draft for that war, but, to an 18-year old man with no plans for the future, it seemed possible, even just for several days. Parents who started that rumor, no doubt had the best of intentions. They, selfishly, just wanted their kid to hurry up and get his college plans in order, and were more than happy to use the latest domestic scare to make their kids do what they wanted. After all, graduation was just a few months away! After about two weeks, and many hours of watching bombs fall down chimneys on CNN, it was very clear, that this "war" would be over in short order, and that a draft was not possible.

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Today, your president obama announced that if his "stimulus" package is not passed right away, "This recession might linger for years. Our economy will lose 5 million more jobs. Unemployment will approach double digits. Our nation will sink deeper into a crisis that, at some point, we may not be able to reverse." He had published these comments in an article titled, "The Action Americans Need." he then went on to say "I reject these theories, and so did the American people when they went to the polls in November and voted resoundingly for change."

I decided to look into this, and I wondered, what is really in this bill that he is so desperate to convince me to accept? I visited http://readthestimulus.org.

Will America sink deeper into a non-reversible crisis if we don't spend $10M for bike trails? Will America be able to un-reverse itself if we don't spend $400 Million on so-called "climate change" research? If we don't spend $1.5 Billion on so-called "green schools" will America cease to exist as we know it?

If we don't spend $1 Billion, (with a B) to follow-up on the 2010 census, (which hasn't even happened yet,) will the American Way come to a screeching halt? How about spending $2 Billion (with a B) on National Parks? I like National Parks, but how is that going to help anyone stay in their home, or keep their job? And so on.

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If you take all the total amount of money they are talking about spending, and divide it by the total number of families in America, it works out to be about $10,000.00 per family. Now let's say those dinks in Congress actually had to borrow that money from the American people for all of those stupid things that will never stimulate the economy.

Wouldn't they be better off just giving everyone a $10,000.00 tax credit? If you were a wage-earner, you would see that in your very next paycheck. If you own your own business, and knew you didn't have to pay $10,000.00 in taxes this year, you would spend it right away, wouldn't you? I know I would probably buy a new car this year.

Maybe you wouldn't. Maybe, you would save it, or use it to pay down your credit cards. Either way, it's better than "$650,000,000, for reconstruction, capital improvement, decommissioning, and maintenance of 21 forest roads, bridges and trails" (on page 119).

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Your congress is about to spend the most money evah! Suppose, you believe that Jesus was born on December 25, 1 B.C.. If you spent $1 Million Dollars each day, between that day and today, you still would not have spent the amount of money that they are talking about spending tomorrow night when the bill comes up for a vote. And we haven't even gotten into the economic consequences of that, which anyone who took high school economics would clearly understand. But hey, change comes at a price, right?

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Every time there is a "crisis," most people make the mistake of overreacting to it. If you think back upon the worst decisions of your life, whether it involves a relationship, a bad wager, a tattoo, an employment decision, or bad purchase, I'll bet you made those bad decisions because of emotion, and because you thought you were in a "crisis." It never occurred to you that the choice of doing nothing is also a choice.

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The parents who started the rumors about us being drafted into the Gulf War, I'm sure had the best intentions, but they also were selfish. They wanted the best for their kids, but they also wanted their kids to get into the best colleges so bad, that they were happy to deceive us into believing something they knew to be untrue.