Things That Confuse Me, Part One

I spend most of my life confused. Not a big surprise.  Maybe if I explain my concerns in this blog, between us we can all better understand my confusion.  If you are as confused about the same issues or concerns I will welcome you to my Confusion Club, in that I am a card carrying member. Maybe you would like to join in my confusion.  Below are a couple things that make no sense to me.  More on Thursday.

Locks.  Sometimes I think we as a country over-do the need for locks. We lock everything.  We lock our car, computer, home, bicycles, among other things.  I need a password to remember all my passwords.   But there are some things I wonder why we lockup or need a password at all.  While visiting a business recently I asked where the restroom was located.  The receptionist promptly advised me that I needed “The Key” to get into the bathroom and that “The Key” was on the counter.  I walked over to the counter and there it was, a three foot wooden two-by-four attached to a two inch key with the words, MENS RESTROOM brightly printed on it. 

I stood there and laughed as I was confused.  I thought to myself, “Have you ever seen anyone steal a bathroom? Heist a urinal? How about skip out with a toilet seat?” The receptionist asked why I laughed. I replied, “It seems strange to me that the bathroom needed to be locked, but I walked into your office without a key.  Is the stuff in the restroom more valuable than what you have here in your office? One other question, why such a large key fob?  It seemed funny to me.”  She then replied, “People keep losing the key to the restroom.” I thought to myself again, “Don’t lock the bathroom and you won’t have to worry about losing the key.”  When was the last time you were walking down the street and saw a guy running down the street with a toilet under his coat?  It just doesn’t make sense, does it to you?

The Deficit.  Whether you are a Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, or an Independent, this one truly confuses me.  If I got myself in trouble financially, I would have to figure a way out of it on my own by both stop spending and start saving.  If I broke a window, I would be expected to pay to have it repaired.  In business, if you borrowed money to expand your business, you were expected to pay it back or you lost your job, your business or both.  Not so in our government.   In Corporate America, you don’t reward employees for being inefficient; you reward them for doing an exceptionally good job. Here comes the confusing part.  If the Congress overspent our tax money, why don’t they pay it back or immediately lose their job? They created this mess we are into today, they should be responsible for paying it back or be replaced with someone that can do the job correctly immediately.  In baseball if a team is playing poorly, they fire the manager no matter how much time is left on his contract and get someone who can turn the team around as quickly as possible.

Why can’t we just fire the politicians on the spot?  Give them a couple of weeks of severance pay and let them stand in line in unemployment like an estimated 17% of our population (if you include those that have exhausted their benefits and stopped looking)? Or maybe we should create a tax on stupidity to get us out of the current financial crisis. Because Congress continues to make politically self-concerned power-driven mistakes, they would be required to pay an additional surtax on their stupidity. 

Instead, we reward them with a lifelong pension and virtually free health insurance for the rest of their entire life.  No "prexisting ailments" to increase their monthly cost.  While they are doing us a favor by requiring us use their mandated health reform program which does not include them.  This is not to say that a national health program could not help some, it could.  The difference is our Congress get to keep their special health program and don’t have to participate in their constituents federally required program. Here comes the really confusing part.  Have you seen any proposals to save money that would reduce their pension or eliminate either their special healthcare perks we have created for them?  Does it seem confusing to you?

Anyone want to join the Club yet? Tune in and read more confusion in Thursday's Blog.

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