I love paying $4 a gallon for gas, how about you?

The oil companies are making record profits and not paying taxes on top of it. That is a fact. The subsidies that they and other huge corporations enjoy are at the heart of many economic issues facing us today. I know that if we take away the corporate welfare the economy will not turn completely around, but it would be nice if the people and companies that are making the money share in their responsibility of paying their share of the burden. The top oil companies share in $4 billion in federal tax credits and subsidies. The home heating subsidy for the average American costs us, $2,5 billion a year. They want to cut the home heating, but not the oil companies. That is what John Boehner and the Republican party would like you to believe. Both programs may need to go, but why take away from people and keep the one for companies? If the Republicans and the Tea Party are serious about reducing the deficit, then repeal the "Bush" tax cuts. This has already cost us $1.5 trillion and is projected to cost us two to four trillion over the next ten years.  If you are short in income in your own budget, you do two things. You cut what you can from your expenses and increase your income. You have to do both. If you go to your doctor and are told you need to lose weight, do you then tell the doctor that exercise is off the table. I will cut back on what I eat but I refuse to lift a finger to loose weight. What will the results be. You will go nowhere. That is what Congress needs to understand. There has to be two streets. One, cut needless programs. Two, increase taxes, by eliminating the corporate welfare and the needless credits and deductions. This is how a budget is balanced. Now back to my original topic, $4 a gallon for gas. Exxon had a first quarter profit of $10.65 billion dollars, up 69% over last year. Take this for a year and the profits are over $40 billion dollars. This is profit. In theory if gas were $2 a gallon, their profits would be a paultry $20 billion. I am crying for them. I don't know about you, but for me, I say it is time for corporate welfare to be replaced with corporate responsibility.

Ignorance Is Bliss!

The typical American loves to talk about how great this country is and spew out the latest catch phrase, about how exceptional America is. I have late breaking news for all of you. We are barely hanging on in the U.S. Each day that goes by our young people slip further behind the youth in other countries because we do not educate. Our economy, which was the envy of the world, grows weaker because of the greed and lack of leadership in both our corporate boardrooms and the halls of Congress. The unemployed and underemployed are not seeing an increase in job opportunities as more jobs are shipped overseas, by greedy CEO's and inept politicians. Our religious leaders are willing to give up their moral beliefs in the name of growth and money. All of these issues are serious and could lead us down the perilous road of self-destruction. However the most critical issue we face is ignorance. Ignorance ,of the average American, and I am not talking about book education. I am talking about the adults in this country that sit around each day, complaining about problems, like the ones I mentioned, and yet they do nothing about it. This is why I say ignorance is bliss. We would rather sit on our butts and write about how terrible we feel today, instead of writing and talking about issues that affect our families. Keep us ignorant and we are happy, then we don't have to be responsible for what is going wrong. We can always answer, " I didn't know!" That can be the epitaph on our country's headstone. As long as we don't know we can deny. Even, when we are presented with the facts, if we turn away quickly enough, we can continue to say, "I didn't know!" Is that the legacy we want to leave our children and grandchildren?  Years from now when your children look at you and ask what happened to the great American dream, just look at them and say, "Dear, I was too busy, posting pictures on face book to be involved, I was too busy posting lines about how I have a headache, I was too busy talking about other people's faults, I was too busy doing nothing all day to learn about how the politicians were giving everything away to corporations and taking our individual rights away. I was too busy enjoying my state of blissfulness and ignorance to write a letter to my Congressperson to make a difference. Look at all the pictures I posted of you, doesn't this show you how much I cared about you?"  They will  look at you one more time and say, "You could have cared enough to learn and be involved." I am going to end with a quote by George Eliot, "It's never too late to be, what you might have been." Think about it.

Prejudiced People Come In All Forms!

Most of the items I choose to write about is the direct result of what I hear or see during the day, either at work or at home. At home I watch news, sports, political or historical channels and I hear many different points of view. At work through the years I have heard as many different views, but I tend to be surprised because in many cases the individual that makes the statement is a friend and their views catch me off guard. Prejudiced statements are one of the things that surprise me. The other day a friend and I were discussing bin Laden's  death and the statement was made, "They should ship them all back to where they came from. They are all terrorists." The, they, that was referred to, are Muslims. A debate ensued and the result was that they are bigoted, when it came to Muslims. This is no different, then wanting to ship blacks back to Africa, because they are criminals. Ship the Italian back to Italy they are all Mafia members. The Hispanics don't speak English and don't want to. Ship them back. People who think like that would have our country empty, except for the Native American Indians, in no time. The Muslims are not terrorists. A small percentage of them have perverted the religion and now they are being placed into one lump group. They are every bit American, those that live here, and like us in so many ways. They want peace. They want their children to grow up, be educated and have opportunities. They have dreams and ambitions. They want to be able to have their religions believes and practice it in their way. They hurt, emotionally and physically when attacked. They bleed when wounded. They laugh when happy and cry when sad. They are, in short human beings, just like you and me. We have to stop placing everyone into a category and one size fits all area, because we lack the depths within ourselves to judge people as individuals. Prejudice is created either by fear or lack of education. In many ways the lack of knowledge about each other leads to the fear. I have stated many times that the way to make every one's lives better, is through education. The next time you feel negatively toward any group, stop and take the time to get to know everything you can about them. Education, will relieve the fear and then we can all come together to tackles the problems that face all of humanity on this small planet, we call Earth. 

Women the Root of All Evil!

A few weeks ago I was talking with a co-worker and was asked where we, humans, went wrong. Jokingly I said it all started with Eve in The Garden of Eden, when she gave Adam the forbidden fruit. We laughed and I said, "Women the root of all evil." I went on to say this would make a good blog, and was told, my life would be in danger if I did. Well, guess what, in honor of Mothers Day, here it is. Yes, Eve, according to the Bible took that fateful bite and did what women everywhere still do to men, tempt us. Men being the weaker sex cannot resist and hence we always find ourselves in trouble. Through out history the stories grow. Delilah and Sampson, Cleopatra and Marc Anthony, John and Pat Lambert. O.K. Maybe the third one is not as well known, but to me it is the most important. My wife, Pat is an extremely beautiful, intelligent, fun, wonderful woman and she has mesmerized me for almost 35 years. Now that I have your attention, I want to tell you about Pat. She has been, without question, the best part of my life. It may be overused , but she is my best friend. When anything happens, good or bad, she is the first person I want to talk to. We share laughs and on rare occasions anger, but always move on to the next episodes of our lives. She is the smartest person I know, partly because she agrees with me most of the time, and also because she disagrees with me some of the time. When she goes in an opposite direction, from me, usually there is something new for me to learn. As great a wife as she is, Pat is also the perfect role model for our two daughter, Jessica and Nicole. They have not always followed her lead, but when they do, they accomplish great things. Pat has always been nurturing and caring and loving for the girls. They have never worried about their Mom being there for them, because she is. Even today, as adults, they turn to their Mother for advise and friendship that goes far beyond the ordinary. As Pat and I have matured, nice way to say gotten older, we have adapted to the role of grandparents. She puts me to shame in this area at times. Place one of her grandchildren in her arms and forget it. You will not get them back. She holds them and gently kisses their heads over and over again, as if the first hundred kisses have not been enough. Have her walk into a room with our grandchildren and all you hear are delighted squeals of, "Grammy."  I know that according to the title, this blog went in a different direction then people expected, however I wanted people to know something about my fantastic wife. If I had started with, let me tell you something about Pat Lambert, how many would have read this. So on this Mothers Day I wanted the world to know, that the person I am today has more to do with the mother of my children then any other person in my life. I wanted to thank her for being a shinning example of womanhood, and a  role model for other women. To my Tish , I wanted her to know that she is, my love, my life my everything and I love you so very much.

The worst of the worst in corporate reputation

The 12th annual Harris Interactive U.S. Reputation Quotient Survey has been released and the results are not surprising. The title is a long description of a way that companies find out how the American public perceives them. The worst companies financial services, banks and oil. There are a couple of auto makers, an airline and a media giant. The bottom eleven are, AIG, BP, Goldman Sachs, Citi Group, Chrysler, Bank of America, General Motors, Exxon Mobil, JP Morgan Chase, Delta Airlines and Comcast. What does all of this mean? These are companies that do not care about the patrons they serve. They are large enough that they demand a presence in Congress, to sway actions on their behalf and against the interest of average American. As I look at the list, what jumps out at me is the fact that most of these companies do not provide a product. They do not invent something new and innovative. Their soul purpose is to make money. Now people will say there he goes again, not wanting people to make money. Wrong. On the best reputation companies there are names, like 3M, Johnson and Johnson, Apple, Intel, Google, etc. I will cover the best in another blog. The difference is, for the most part, the admired companies produce something and are leaders in innovation. I have no problem with these companies making money. They are not gouging the American public. The two auto makers are moving up, the right way, but have a distance to go, I am sure that there is still back lash from the auto bail-outs, for them. Financial service companies and banks are making huge profits again and the regulations we need to keep from having another financial mess, still have not been put in place. These companies helped to put us in the deep recession that we are now experiencing and they will do it again if left alone. The American people know the type of companies these are, now it is time for Congress to figure that out and act accordingly.

Release the Pictures of bin Laden.

Since Sunday night people have been talking about the killing of terrorist Osama bin Laden. Part of the conversation has been centered around, releasing the photos of bin Laden after he was shot. I say release them and do it now. This is not in response to the conspiracy theorists. This is not some morbid sense of curiosity for me. This is about showing terrorists the end result of them leading a lawless life outside the scope of humanity. This has the potential of making some young budding al-Qaeda recruit think about how they will end up. There is no entry into heaven with happiness. This is about two shots to the head. This is about blood and brain tissue and gore, not glory. Sure some people will look because of curiosity. Some will be repulsed. I do want to see them. I will not be harmed in some way because of the photos. You don't want to see them, don't look, but make bin Laden the poster boy for the fact, if you kill innocent people, you will be hunted down and killed like the monster you are. Period!

Thank You Navy SEALS!

Each day it is important that we remember the men and women who sacrifice so much for our country. Today though, I would like to send out a special thanks to Navy SEAL Team Six. These are the most highly trained and efficient warriors in the world and on Sunday they proved it. Over the next days and weeks the detail will come out and we can start to appreciate the job these men did in Pakistan. The SEAL team is under the JSOC, Joint Special Operations Command, based at Fort Bragg. They operate along with the Army Rangers, Delta Force and the Air Force 24th Special Squadron. Also available from SOCOM, Special Operations Command are the Marines Force Recon. Any of these groups could have been called upon to perform the operation into Pakistan and the killing of Osama bin Laden. All of them would have loved the opportunity. The SEALS got the call and performed above and beyond to accomplish the mission at hand. OUTSTANDING job. Thank you to each and every person involved. One last thank you to the President of the United States. This was a risky call, but one our President showed leadership to make. The war against terrorists will be fought in this fashion. We must remember that the outcomes are not certain and there will be times that we will loose our men in these actions, but this is the new warfare. Look at our own history to see the effect of smaller units in quick strikes. During the revolutionary war the British, had a larger force and the arrogance of the British, had them marching down the road in wide open spaces. The Americans with less troops and less firepower hid behind trees and fences. They did quick hits and moved. That is the way of the modern terrorist. They hit and hide. The only way to win this new war is to hit and hide. We poured large amounts of troops into areas, but al-Qaeda knew we were coming and moved. This time we went in quick, hit our targets and got out. This is what will work going forward. This is how JSOC and the elite Seals team 6 did their mission on Sunday. This is how they killed bin Laden and this is what I thank them for.