39 and Holding

Lets see if I’ve got this right. The airlines have gone up with their prices.....reduced services.....and all in the name of high fuel prices.  

O.K., we common folk are faced with higher and higher fuel prices.....we are faced with changing our eating habits to be able to afford to drive to work.  Our vacations are reduced to staying home and mowing the grass, so we can put away a few bucks to get our kids an education.

My question is how did this all come about?  There is no one answer, but we have been able to name  several contributors.  We have had a legislative branch spend money they didn’t have like a drunken sailor on shore leave.  We have airlines basing their revenue on revenue from the postal service.  I could care less that a first class letter is carried on a truck or bus which means an additional day or so enroute to its destination at a tiny fraction of the cost of handling it several times to get it to an aircraft that can save a day of delivery time.

The automobile industry is one of the worst contributors to the problem with their greedy desire to make it a social force to own a bigger, faster and less fuel efficient autmobile.  

To add to this we must now face the worst offender, the American public.  We fall prey to the TV and print media’s bruhaha that we must not let the next door neighbor have something, from a newer  bigger, faster automobile, a bigger TV, a larger fishing boat, and live in a house that can meet the needs of many times the number of occupants.  

I stand firm with former Senator Phil Gramm with his assessment that we Americans have become a nation of “whiners”.  We need to kick the slats out of our political leaders inside the Beltway, suck in our gut, and get out of the business of trying to tell the rest of the world how to govern themselves.

The Iraqi political leaders have asked us to leave and this opens the door for us to get the heck out of Dodge because we were asked.  It is a sorry way to save our face, but it’s time to face the music.  

We need to control our borders, and balance our budget.

Now I ask you. is this simplistic approach all that wrong?