The Senate passed the $280 billion “Chips For America” bill. Well intentioned, but I think there are unfortunate unintended consequences down the road.

In Farm Show Magazine there was an entry about a farmer with a General Motors pickup that sits waiting for parts to honor a warranty claim concerning a DEF (diesel exhaust fluid) problem that crippled its Isuzu V6. In my experience whenever I see an approaching pickup with one light out it identifies it as General Motors.

I have a friend who swore he would never buy another General Motors product because of the bailout in 2008. This particular guy went broke with his excavating business during the 1980s Farm Crisis. But he didn’t declare bancruptcy. He worked and paid every single creditor who had trusted him.

General Motors made a faulty ignition switch that ultimately cost 124 people their lives when their cars unexpectedly went out of control. GM got a slap on the wrist even though they tried to cover up their mistake beginning in 2001.

The drone of underpaid and abused workers we hear from unions just might be true after all. A big chunk of their paychecks goes to enable mismanagement at the corporate level similar to a parent enabling a dope or video-game addict. Whether through inflation or taxation, we pay for shoddy products and poor business decisions with subsidies and mandates. I wonder, are these bailouts planned ahead of time by crony capitalists and their congressional pets, or are they just plain dumb?

In the “bailout-plan” column is the Ukrainian war and the Covid 19 pandemic. Ukraine has zero strategic value for the United States, yet tens of billions of American workers’ hard earned cash now reside in the pockets of so-called defense contractors. Russia’s defense budget is only 13% of the United States’ defense budget. Yet gullible consumers of corporate propaganda actually believe Russia is on a march to rule the world.

With actual fatalities similar to those from a bad flu, pharmaceutical companies are fleecing the working class with a constant stream of vaccines that don’t work and have a largely unreported record of terrible, adverse reactions. Moderna and Pfizer are featured in the Wall Street Journal driving up real estate values with their executives and workers on a buying spree of penthouses and mansions.

The traditional bashing of welfare cheats dissolved to some extent when Republicans knelt before Bill Clinton, praising him for his welfare reform. Interestingly, there was a huge increase in bad backs and mental illness accompanied by Social Security Disability checks about that time. But corporate welfare has these unfortunate individuals beat hands down.

Joni Ernst and Chuck Grassley have joined Bernie Sanders (Democratic posterboy for stolen elections) in a losing effort to defeat “Chips For America,” This bill has to be one of the biggest rewards for incompetance ever invented.

This kind of thing is what really adds up to recession, which recent GDP data indicate we are in right now. Wage gains are 4% behind the inflation rate, an indicator of increasing wealth disparity between rich and poor. That disparity is facilitated by corporate welfare as in “Chips For America.”

When people like Grassley, Ernst, and Sanders prove their commitment to America by further letting working families keep what they earn, recession will self-correct.

In 1920 there was a sharper downturn in the economy than the one in 1929. President Warren Harding drastically reduced the size of the federal government. After a year and a half of sorting out waste America had one of the most prosperous decades in its history. Contrast that with Hoover’s and Roosevelt’s numerous programs for helping put Americans to work. But where did they lead? The Great Depression for 16 years.

I have several friends who believe the government should have a say in what guns we own. As is often the case, a law doesn’t make it so. But we can at least try, right?

I can’t imagine what it would be like to suddenly be exposed to random gunfire. If the gun wasn’t there, no problem. The same as if the drugs weren’t there, there would be no drug addicts. We’ve had 80 years to legislate drug addiction into oblivion. Wishing doesn’t guarantee results.

There’s a place we like to go to eat gyros. It’s adjoining a laundromat. A porch across the street has an overstuffed couch and a dog chained-up on bare dirt by the broken steps. The window of the gyro place has a sign, “No firearms allowed.”

If I had a choice going there for one of their excellent gyros who would I choose as a fellow customer? Jonathan Sapirman or Elisjsha Dicken?

In Greenwood Park Mall south of Indianapolis our choice would have been clear. Sapirman came to kill. Dicken came to shop with his girlfriend. Against the rules of the mall each carried a gun.

Starting from 40 yards away, Dicken swiftly approached the murderer while motioning shoppers toward safety. He fired ten shots, hitting Sapirman eight times. Sapirman killed three and wounded two before Dicken put an end to him.

The media that is raising our kids and influencing voters today would have us believe accuracy like that with a pistol is common. It is not. Elisjsha Dicken was simply a good person with an interest in guns and trained by his grandfather. He didn’t call 911 or get training in any official capacity. There are lots of people like that who would have left their gun at home because the mall was a gun-free zone. Mayor Mark Meyers said Dicken “saved countless lives.”

It is easy to find statistics supporting gun control that understate legal gun ownership as a deterrent. There are no statistics for the number of times a criminal passed up a crime because of the possibility of an unseen lethal threat. The threat of the eventual presence of police officers filling out paperwork probably hasn’t stopped many crimes.

Countries all over the world are liberalizing gun ownership laws in response to rising crime. The same media that misrepresents the accurracy of handguns expressed shock when Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro liberalized gun laws.

When Bolsonaro took office the murder rate was 27.8 per 100,000 people, compared to 5 per 100,000 people in the U.S. There were about 330,000 gun owners in Brazil (strictly defined as law enforcement). Each of them paid $260 for a license with a $25 renewal fee every three years. Anyone else caught with a gun served four years in prison. Now the license fee is $18.50 every ten years.

After Bolsonsaro’s reforms, 400,000 legal gun owners were added. In three years after more than doubling the number of legal gun owners, Brazil’s murder rate has fallen 34%.

As we look around the U.S., murder rates are highest in cities with the strictest gun control. This may be a result of an attempt to rein in horrendous crime. But these laws have had time to work and things are still not improving.

Maybe it’s time to grow up and do what works instead of putting on a show. People like Elisjsha Dicken are not as rare as they are portrayed to be.

If you have the stomach, for it there is an excellent representation of crime in Brazil in the movie City of God (2002). Dawn had to quit watching but I think it might be a glimpse into our future if criminals are considered victims.

I Choose Elisjsha

I have several friends who believe the government should have a say in what guns we own. As is often the case, a law doesn’t make it so. But we can at least try, right?

I can’t imagine what it would be like to suddenly be exposed to random gunfire. If the gun wasn’t there, no problem. The same as if the drugs weren’t there, there would be no drug addicts. We’ve had 80 years to legislate drug addiction into oblivion. Wishing doesn’t guarantee results.

There’s a place we like to go to eat gyros. It’s adjoining a laundromat. A porch across the street has an overstuffed couch and a dog chained-up on bare dirt by the broken steps. The window of the gyro place has a sign, “No firearms allowed.”

If I had a choice going there for one of their excellent gyros who would I choose as a fellow customer? Jonathan Sapirman or Elisjsha Dicken?

In Greenwood Park Mall south of Indianapolis our choice would have been clear. Sapirman came to kill. Dicken came to shop with his girlfriend. Against the rules of the mall each carried a gun.

Starting from 40 yards away, Dicken swiftly approached the murderer while motioning shoppers toward safety. He fired ten shots, hitting Sapirman eight times. Sapirman killed three and wounded two before Dicken put an end to him.

The media that is raising our kids and influencing voters today would have us believe accuracy like that with a pistol is common. It is not. Elisjsha Dicken was simply a good person with an interest in guns and trained by his grandfather. He didn’t call 911 or get training in any official capacity. There are lots of people like that who would have left their gun at home because the mall was a gun-free zone. Mayor Mark Meyers said Dicken “saved countless lives.”

It is easy to find statistics supporting gun control that understate legal gun ownership as a deterrent. There are no statistics for the number of times a criminal passed up a crime because of the possibility of an unseen lethal threat. The threat of the eventual presence of police officers filling out paperwork probably hasn’t stopped many crimes.

Countries all over the world are liberalizing gun ownership laws in response to rising crime. The same media that misrepresents the accurracy of handguns expressed shock when Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro liberalized gun laws.

When Bolsonaro took office the murder rate was 27.8 per 100,000 people, compared to 5 per 100,000 people in the U.S. There were about 330,000 gun owners in Brazil (strictly defined as law enforcement). Each of them paid $260 for a license with a $25 renewal fee every three years. Anyone else caught with a gun served four years in prison. Now the license fee is $18.50 every ten years.

After Bolsonsaro’s reforms, 400,000 legal gun owners were added. In three years after more than doubling the number of legal gun owners, Brazil’s murder rate has fallen 34%.

As we look around the U.S., murder rates are highest in cities with the strictest gun control. This may be a result of an attempt to rein in horrendous crime. But these laws have had time to work and things are still not improving.

Maybe it’s time to grow up and do what works instead of putting on a show. People like Elisjsha Dicken are not as rare as they are portrayed to be.

If you have the stomach, for it there is an excellent representation of crime in Brazil in the movie City of God (2002). Dawn had to quit watching but I think it might be a glimpse into our future if criminals are considered victims.

Here are some helpful hints on how to remain healthy from a guy who loves sugar, salt, and fat.

One day about a month ago my calf swelled up. I mean really swelled up, and hurt. It was a spontaneous hematoma, probably having to do with an old logging injury and a little aspirin. A hematoma is (say this like Dracula) a pool of blood.

First word of advice: Don’t use aspirin unless your doctor tells you to. Second: If the loader operator is three truckloads behind, just leave.

I wouldn’t have missed out on the first half of summer if I knew these things 47 years and a month ago..

The “pandemic” inspired a lot of Google searches by the inquisitive problem solvers among us. We kept adding this or that vitamin until I thought food would soon be scorned as filling space where pills should be. Then suddenly something deep down inside said, “Food has vitamins. What are you doing?” Replacing pills with food then made me feel better.

As I see the numbers of vaccinated sick people and the numbers of adverse reactions to vaccines pile up, I feel even more strongly that I should have taken Dawn’s last name of Thomas instead of giving her Groszkruger. Doubting Thomas would be more accurate in these times than Pea Scruger, which is how Google translates Groszkruger. Fun, huh? If anyone out there knows what a pea scruger is let me know so I know what to do.

Anyway, a calf full of blood is really nothing compared to a lot of other people’s problems. I just wish it wasn’t so grueling being confined to the house with my leg above my heart through the summer weather. It reminds me of school, where all I wanted was out!

Here is some interesting information I’ve found in my idle time:

The tobacco companies swore up and down that smoking was good for us. I swear, some people don’t have the sense they were born with. Sunscreen companies base their profits on making the source of life on Earth (sunshine) a villain.

High vitamin D levels are associated with melanoma (skin cancer). But compared to all the diseases linked to low vitamin D levels I would say we’ve been misled. People with low vitamin D in their blood have significantly higher rates of virtually every disease you can think of: cancer, diabetes, obesity, osteoporosis, heart attack, stroke, depression, cognitive impairment, autoimmune conditions, and more.

Naturally we look toward pills. But wait. A study of nearly 26,000 people who received high doses of vitamin D supplements over five years showed no impact on rates of cancer, heart disease, or stroke. So relying on pills is not as effective as free sunshine.

It turns out vitamin D is really like a scale measuring sunlight exposure, one of the effects being an increase in beneficial nitric acid. Nitric acid lowers blood pressure. For every one person who dies from skin cancer, 80 die from cardiovascular diseases.

I also found it interesting that people with long term sun exposure actually have less melanoma. But those with intermittent exposure or sunburns (especially when young) are the ones with increased cancer risk.

To boil health down to simple good or bad foods or behavior, seems less effective than luck or moderation. But when making these important decisions “cui bono?” should be part of the mix. That is, “who benefits?”

Dawn says my tombstone will read, “Anything in Moderation.” This leg can’t get moderate soon enough for me.