Noise for Quiet Cars

            Ever since the government got into the car manufacturing business with its bailout of GM and Chrysler, it has salivated at the chance to tell Detroit how to build cars.

             I couldn't believe my eyes when I read about this beauty of a directive: By the end of next year it seems car manufacturers of hybrid and electric cars will have to add noise to their vehicles because they are too quiet. The reason is that blind people rely on sound to know if a car is coming. And pedestrians too consumed with their cellphone conversations might not check for oncoming traffic before stepping off the curb.

             I kid you not.

            So manufacturers of quiet cars are now scrambling to come up with the right sound to alert people trying to cross the street. A bird's tweet? A jet's roar? An engine's growl?

            To top it all off, the government is thinking of requiring quiet cars to have noise-makers at the rear as well as the front, because blind people need to know when a car has gone by.

            But I'm not finished. The warning noise will come on automatically whenever a quiet car slows below 20 miles per hour. Can you imagine the annoyance of neighbors in a peaceful suburb who will have to endure these warning sounds whenever a "quiet" car rolls down the street or into the driveway next door?

            I'm all for making sure the blind can cross the street safely. But since moving to North Carolina nine years ago, I haven't seen a single blind man trying to cross the street. I'm sure I can say the same for most people living outside of urban areas.  So, rather than mandating that manufacturers install on every quiet car hundreds of dollars of equipment that may never serve their intended purpose, might there be a more sensible and economical way of warning pedestrians?

            How about a horn? Doesn't every car have one of those?

Perry's Ponzi Scheme

            Rick Perry has been blasted for calling Social Security a Ponzi scheme. How could he have said something so stupid?

            Let's see. A short definition of a Ponzi scheme is an operation that is fraudulent because it pays returns to investors not from actual profits earned, but from money paid by subsequent investors.

            Hmm. Social Security pays retirees not from an empty Social Security Trust Fund, but from current Social Security payroll taxes on current employees and their employers. Where did all that Trust Fund money go? Why the government took it to fund other things. Like the stimulus package, for example. So there is no money to pay future retirees. In the real world that's called an unfunded pension liability.

            Sounds like a Ponzi scheme to me.

            To make matters worse, President Obama is proposing to cut payroll taxes yet again, to the tune of a $175 billion tax holiday.

            Not to worry. The Anointed One says Social Security will still receive every dollar it would have gotten otherwise through a transfer from the General Fund into the Social Security Trust Fund.

            The General Fund? Isn't that the one that's $14 trillion dollars in debt?

            Sounds like a double Ponzi scheme to me.

            Rick Perry didn't say something so stupid after all.

What Would Bierce Say?

            The wicked wit Ambrose Bierce defined a Christian as "one who follows the teachings of Christ insofar as they are not inconsistent with a life of sin."

            Were he alive today, Bierce might have offered this variation: a White House ideologue is one who professes faithfulness to the Constitution insofar as it is not inconsistent with his socialist agenda. You get the same formulation if you substitute the words "will of the people" or "the rule of law" for "the Constitution."

            It is simply amazing to me how this administration repeatedly thwarts all three.

            The Constitution calls for a clear separation of powers. Specifically, it places lawmaking responsibility on Congress. But when Congress doesn't pass legislation desired by the administration, our chief executive uses regulatory agencies to achieve his goals. The National Labor Relations Board and the Environmental Protection Agency don't need Card Check and Cap and Trade legislation--they just make rulings and issue regulations to get what they want.

            A majority of Americans did not want Obamacare, but President Obama and a veto-proof Congress shoved it down our throats just the same.

            Arizona passed laws to protect its citizens from the invasion of illegal aliens and drug smugglers, but the Department of Justice blocked their enforcement. And when Congress didn't provide a clear road to amnesty for illegals, President Obama decided to do it himself, beginning with halting deportations required by law.

            Is it any wonder our government gets such low ratings from the citizenry? Do we not recognize the truth in the cynicism of an Ambrose Bierce as applied to today's leaders?

Birds Big and Small

            Every morning at breakfast I am entertained by birds feeding outside my window. Most go to the feeder strung up high to keep squirrels away (or so I thought). Others, like doves and thrashers, won't fly up to the feeder, so they feed on the seed I toss on the ground for them.

            But the other day I witnessed an extraordinary scene.

            A brown bird that I had never seen before sat on the ground shivering its feathers and calling open-mouthed like a nestling demanding to be fed. Before long a tiny sparrow, a quarter the size of the brown bird, began to pick seeds off the ground and pop them into the larger bird's gaping mouth. This went on for several minutes until the sparrow finally flew away. Thereupon the larger bird stopped shivering its feathers and began to feed itself from the seed on the ground.

            I couldn't help thinking that I had witnessed a perfect metaphor for the way out nanny state operates. Here was a large bird demanding to be fed while it was quite capable of feeding itself. Instead, it accepted food from a hard-working cousin with a sense of compassion and social responsibility.

            It has been said that our democracy will founder when more than half our citizens depend on the government for some form of sustenance. Aren't we there already? A shrinking labor base no longer capable of financing Social Security benefits for a growing number of retirees; a Medicare program facing exploding costs that will bankrupt the system before the end of the decade; Medicaid rolls that will increase by 30 million when Obamacare is fully implemented; Food Stamps now handed out to 1 of every 7 people.

            Last year President Obama knew he had a looming debt crisis when he appointed a bi-partisan commission, familiarly known as Simpson-Bowles, to look into reforming the system. The commission did a commendable job of recommending, among other things, tax reform and sensible ways to control runaway entitlement costs. So what did the president do with the commission's report? He trashed it.

            And the mess got worse. We got the debt ceiling crisis, the S&P downgrade, and the panic on Wall Street, not to mention the housing collapse and persistent unemployment.

            What will our anointed leader do for us next? He promises to tell us after Labor Day. Why wait? He could start right now by telling us he plans to stop feeding the birds who are quite capable of feeding themselves.

            But don't hold your breath. Those birds are now in the majority. And they vote.

Etched in My Memory

            The tawdry spectacle is over.

            Sounds of the disgusting battle in Washington over the debt ceiling have been muted. But for me, three things are etched in my memory.

            1. Corporate jets. They became the prime symbol on the banner under which President Obama waged his class warfare against the rich. Yet, the president never once mentioned the biggest and most expensive corporate jet of them all: Air Force One. His private conveyance to speeches, rallies, and fund raisers all over the country costs the American taxpayer hundreds of thousands of dollars each time he pulls it out of the hangar. And let's not forget the trip to New York to attend a Broadway show with the First Lady, or her vacations to Mexico, Spain, and South Africa. The royal couple's hypocrisy knows no bounds.

            2. Life on the planet. Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi famously said that failing to solve our debt ceiling crisis would end life on the planet as we know it. Has there ever been a more wild-eyed exaggeration than this?  Is the sense of self-importance more bloated anywhere than in the halls of Congress? Al Gore is right about global warming. It is indeed being caused by mankind. Not the burning of fossil fuels, though. It's the hot air spouting from our capital.

            3. Terrorists. One statement in the heat of battle was even more astounding to me than Pelosi's apocalypse. And that was Vice-President Biden calling the tea partiers terrorists. Imagine the man one heartbeat away from the presidency equating American citizens who want to control spending in Washington with the madmen who bombed us on 9/11 and who dress their children in explosive vests and send them off on suicide missions. Is there a more morbid symptom of the depravity of our leaders than this?

            Yes, the sights and sounds of the battle have faded. But let us not forget.

Heroes

            "True heroism is remarkably sober, very undramatic. It is not the urge to surpass all others at whatever cost, but the urge to serve others at whatever cost."           

            This quote is from Arthur Ashe, an inspirational hero himself for his personal performance on and off the tennis court. Well, the other day I met three people who fit Ashe's description of heroism.

            The occasion was a dinner party for Colonel Patrick Hynes who had just returned from his latest tour in Afghanistan. Since graduating from West Point in 1991 he has been on multiple assignments, including eight deployments to combat zones. There is hardly any room on his uniform to display all his ribbons, awards, and medals, including two Bronze Stars. He is now on a high level training assignment at the Industrial College of the Armed Forces (ICAF) from which he no doubt will emerge a brigadier general. This is a true hero in my eyes. His dedication, his commitment, and his years of service to his country reflect his urge to serve others at whatever cost.

            The second hero I met was his wife Eleni. When I asked her how many times she has had to move over the years, she started counting, but gave up after nine. "Only a life lived for others is worth living," said Albert Einstein. Eleni is the one who has had to pack up the kids and the dog whenever duty called her husband. Except that many of her moves were to a home filled with worry, loneliness, and the burden of going on without her partner. Einstein would have agreed that her life meets his definition of a life worth living.

            The third hero is a lady named Dolores who has a small flag with two red stars hanging in her dining room window. The stars represent her two sons who are active military. One is Patrick, the other his brother Kevin, whom I would like to meet someday. Kevin is an Army captain and a JAG officer with his own record of deployments to combat zones.

            No man can fully know the heart of a mother who sends two sons off to war. I surely can't. I can only recall what Joshua Chamberlain said: "Heroism is latent in every human soul, however humble or unknown." He was referring to the veterans who served under him at Gettysburg. He could have just as well have been thinking about their mothers.

            Heroes have a thousand faces. I feel privileged to know three of them.

A High Five

            In my recent blog on my visit to Austria, I did not mention an incident that stuck in my mind and led me to thinking about things.

            One late afternoon I was standing on a corner in Salzburg waiting with fellow tourists for our tour bus. Nearby was a group of young school girls waiting for a local bus. They appeared to be only mildly curious about us, which is understandable in this city flooded with tourists at this time of year..

            I was wearing a tell-tale tourist get-up: shorts, collared shirt, sneakers, and a camera around my neck. But one of the girls noticed something else about me:  my favorite navy blue cap with the big, red "B" on the front. With the joy of recognition in her eyes, she walked up to me and pointed to my hat. "Boston Red Sox," she exclaimed. I nodded and smiled. Then she raised her right hand and slapped me a High Five.

            Citizens of Red Sox Nation are everywhere in this country. I'm used to having people recognize my hat, even in North Carolina. But I was surprised that it enabled me to make a connection with an Austrian school girl.

            This made me think about ways to connect with others, especially those who might not share my love of baseball, jazz, or history. I can think of any number of ways to break the ice with a stranger or with a new neighbor. But at the extreme end of the human spectrum, how would I connect with a jihadist who would kill me if he could? Or a drug dealer who would poison a child for profit? Or a trafficker in human slaves?       

            The inescapable fact is that there are a lot of bad people in this world. Connecting with them might be impossible. On the other hand, one might argue that there is some good in everyone, even in the face of utter depravity, corruption, and inhumanity. If one can choose evil, can't one also choose good?

            "Why can't we all get along?" asked Rodney King. Indeed, why can't the best and the worst of us find something to High-Five each other about, even if it's something as unimportant as a Red Sox cap? It would be a beginning.

            Can a Child show the way?