The Controversial Column

November 3, 2015

In Case You Were Wondering What I Was Thinking

Global warming (AKA “climate change) represents to me a large group of people who see capitalism and growth as a threat and are using the environment as an excuse to curb it. The voices are loud, the science is weak and, like all zealots, they launch personal attacks on those who contest the point.
Airport security is largely symbolic as represented by the TSA. The main threat comes from the trucks and supplies being delivered in cargo areas and on the tarmac, and relatively little is done to check authenticity or actual materials.
Residential recycling does little but make people feel good. The major waste comes from industrial production, not the home. Plastics, especially, are not recycled effectively.
Candidates like Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders scare me only because they attract so many people who actually believe they’re intelligent and capable of leading this country. Trump is simply a bully with a pulpit, and Sanders is a blatant socialist/Marxist with an agenda solely to redistribute wealth.
If you want to talk about discrimination, why is it that there are no women running late-night talk shows when so many women are clearly qualified and funny? Most of the guys hosting these shows are largely unfunny most of the time.
If you have an allergy to fragrances, fair enough, but don’t take a job like hygienist or lab assistant which puts you into close contact with people every day and demand that they don’t use a fragrance. (What do they do on an elevator, or in a bus?)
I love football, but I can’t see any reason to continue full-contact football below the college level. With today’s speed and tactics it is more dangerous for developing youth than ever.
The growth of “participation awards” in place of awards for winning, and the elimination of valedictory awards to deemphasize scholarly excellence are parts of a movement to make us all as successful as the least successful members of society. We’re in an age where seeking to excel has been replaced by lowering the bar and undermining standards so that everyone can pretend they’re as good as everyone else.
The idea that anyone can retire after 20 years on a job, despite age, or that 65 is the correct mandatory retirement age, is rooted in the 1940s when average life expectancy was 68. We are killing our economy supporting people who could be supporting themselves. I’m forced by law to receive social security benefits I don’t need and to draw down from retirement plans that I don’t need yet.
Electric cars are not going to replace the internal combustion engine so long as oil reserves continue to increase (larger today than in the 1950s), technology keeps reducing emissions, and mileage requirements keep climbing and are met. Tesla reminds me of a charity more than an auto company, losing money in vast amounts and begging the government to penalize the competition.
We will continue to create vast underclasses in the U.S. so long as we fund schools through local property taxes which penalize poorer areas, pay teachers so poorly and fail to evaluate them with any accuracy, allow for untouchable tenure, and refuse to invest in public primary and secondary schools. We need the equivalent of a “man on the moon” effort here.
We overrate the academic prowess of fine schools, but underrate their real power: connections. Thunderbird, ostensibly one of THE finest business schools in the country, went bankrupt from poor management! Any irony there? You can get a good higher education anywhere if you have the incentive and discipline, but the people you meet and can rely on later will vary tremendously.
When will a woman’s group or any group begin to protest the blow-dried, super-model-makeup, Barbie-like requirements for most female newscasters and weather reporters? The men can have wrinkles and thinning hair and rumpled suits. And do we really need female sideline reporters in professional football telecasts looking the same way?
There are no “native Americans.” Apparently, the first humans in North America arrived via a land bridge then present over what is now the Bering Sea. So perhaps we’re all Siberian.