Monthly Archives: June 2010

Politics

The Commencement Speech That Was

Every year about this time, big-government liberals stand up in front of college commencement crowds across the country and urge the graduates to do the noblest thing possible— become big-government liberals.

That isn’t how they phrase it, of course. Commencement speakers express great reverence for “public service,” as distinguished from narrow private “greed.” There is usually not the slightest sign of embarrassment at this self-serving celebration of the kinds of careers they have chosen— over and above the careers of others who merely provide us with the food we eat, the homes we live in, the clothes we wear and the medical care that saves our health and our lives.

What I would like to see is someone with the guts to tell those students: Do you want to be of some use and service to your fellow human beings? Then let your fellow human beings tell you what they want— not with words, but by putting their money where their mouth is.

You want to see more people have better housing? Build it! Become a builder or developer— if you can stand the sneers and disdain of your classmates and professors who regard the very words as repulsive.

Would you like to see more things become more affordable to more people? Then figure out more efficient ways of producing things or more efficient ways of getting those things from the producers to the consumers at a lower cost.

That’s what a man named Sam Walton did when he created Wal-Mart, a boon to people with modest incomes and a bane to the elite intelligentsia. In the process, Sam Walton became rich. Was that the “greed” that you have heard your classmates and professors denounce so smugly? If so, it has been such “greed” that has repeatedly brought prices down and thereby brought the American standard of living up.

Back at the beginning of the 20th century, only 15 percent of American families had a flush toilet. Not quite one-fourth had running water.

Only three percent had electricity and one percent had central heating. Only one American family in a hundred owned an automobile.

By 1970, the vast majority of those American families who were living in poverty had flush toilets, running water and electricity. By the end of the twentieth century, more Americans were connected to the Internet than were connected to a water pipe or a sewage line at the beginning of the century.

More families have air-conditioning today than had electricity then. Today, more than half of all families with incomes below the official poverty line own a car or truck and have a microwave.

This didn’t come about because of the politicians, bureaucrats, activists or others in “public service” that you are supposed to admire. No nation ever protested its way from poverty to prosperity or got there through rhetoric or bureaucracies.

It was Thomas Edison who brought us electricity, not the Sierra Club. It was the Wright brothers who got us off the ground, not the Federal Aviation Administration. It was Henry Ford who ended the isolation of millions of Americans by making the automobile affordable, not Ralph Nader.

Those who have helped the poor the most have not been those who have gone around loudly expressing “compassion” for the poor, but those who found ways to make industry more productive and distribution more efficient, so that the poor of today can afford things that the affluent of yesterday could only dream about.

The wonderful places where you are supposed to go to do “public service” are as sheltered from the brutal test of reality as you have been on this campus for the last four— or is it six?— years. In these little cocoons, all that matters is how well you talk the talk. People who go into the marketplace have to walk the walk.

Colleges can teach many valuable skills, but they can also nourish many dangerous illusions. If you really want to be of service to others, then let them decide what is a service by whether they choose to spend their hard-earned money for it.

The above was lifted from Thomas Sowell’s site at Creators.com, and is entitled The Real Public Service.

To find out more about Thomas Sowell and read features by other Creators Syndicate columnists and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com. Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. His Web site is www.tsowell.com.

Link:  The Real Public Service

Florida, Pensacola, Uncategorized

Help Is On The Way In Gulf Oil Leak, Part 2

This is a follow-up to Help Is On The Way In Gulf Oil Leak from two days ago. Written by Dr. Thomas B. Manton who went to Venice, LA to assess the situation and offer his expertise to the government in mitigating this disaster in the Gulf. Good news on that front could possibly be coming in the near future. Of course you will see it here and elsewhere when things become ‘official.’ But first this from Dr. Manton.

THE HUMAN FACE OF VENICE, LOUISIANA

The Pastor must take care of his/her Flock. That is what The Rev. Captain Jesse Morris has been doing for the last many years – through both the disaster of Hurricane Katrina and now the massive BP oil spill here in the Gulf just off the shores of this small fishing and oil servicing town.

On August 29th 2005 Katrina swooped in from the Gulf of Mexico and covered the place where we are now staying with 20 feet of water between the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico. This town of Venice did not have one building standing here. Everything here has been built since the reconstruction of the town began in 2005-6. It has been a remarkable transformation that this town has gone through due to the energy and dedication and determination of its people.

Jesse Morris stands out as a shining example of this huge transformation. He would say that he did his duty as a Pastor and a shepherd to his flock. Yet his ingenuity and leadership guided so many people through the most difficult years of their lives and he continues to undertake that wonderful role during this time when so many of his flock (75% of his congregation are fisherman like him) have no prospect of work for years to come because of the pollution in the entire food chain. . If you are asking why can’t they be trained to do something else. Sixty percent of the fishermen cannot read or write and they are 4th or 5th or 6th generation of fishermen. Jesse’s father cannot read or write yet Jesse went to college and is a leader of the whole community. He is truly a remarkable human being.

In talking to Jesse and his lovely wife, Charlotte, this morning we learned that they were not permitted by the authorities to return to Venice until four weeks after the hurricane. They came back to the only building standing which was a composite structure made by a Calgary, Alberta based company – Sprung Instant Structure. Jesse immediately ordered new fabric for the structure….since the first one had survived, more or less, this category 5 hurricane. The new fabric arrived just 22 days after they ordered it from Canada and was a life saver since all the major relief organizations were working out of that building – the Red Cross, Salvation Army, United Way and a church relief organization.

Volunteers started to arrive and first it was a trickle and then a flood. Thousands came from all over North America to see how they could help. All of them had to be fed as they cleaned up the 250 lots within the first three months for the devastated citizens of this small fishing village. The volunteers came from church groups across the country, especially the Mennonites. The Amish came not only from Pennsylvania where they are famous but also from many parts of this great country. They rebuilt the church and lived in it as long as they didn’t have any other place to bed down….sometimes 50 to a room getting cots from the US Army and others. They served over 100,000 hot meals to these volunteers who had come at their own expense from all across the United States and Canada. They rebuilt 25 homes and built from scratch 13 new homes. The Amish set the record of building one of the homes in two weeks.

While this brave man and his family were helping people back into their homes, he and his family were given a trailer from FEMA. Within a month or six weeks the FEMA bureaucrats decided that Jesse and his family were not deserving of being in this trailer and told him to leave. After that, the trailer remained empty. That is how uncaring and unfeeling some bureaucrats can be. They then say – we are just following the rules.

Jesse, his family and his church folks were just following what GOD has commanded “when you saw us hungry – you feed us, when you saw us without a roof over us, you gave us shelter, when you saw us in sickness – healed us…..”

Now it was as if the experience of Katrina was just a warm up to the task Jesse and his flock are now facing. With 75% of his congregation fishermen, they were blocked from doing what generations of their families had done before them – fishing.

Three days after the BP rig burned and disappeared below the waves; Jesse got his church together and said we are going to have to prepare for the worst. Jesse was determined, in the great American tradition, that nobody was going to be dependent on government handouts and they were going to work for what they get. Early on Jesse, being an entrepreneur in addition to a Pastor and fisherman, said everyone coming here will need to eat. He now serves 1,350 meals per day as box lunches for the people that are the workers going out to clean up this huge mess.

Workers are being hired from all over this part of the country at a starting salary of $22.50 per hour being paid for by BP. They might work or they might not work, depending on BP. The last several days most of them were paid for sitting waiting for the call from BP. The dispersants that BP has been using – some of which have been banned by the UK government for use in British waters, but approved by the US EPA, have made many workers sick. Therefore, when the level of dispersants and oil which they are to disperse get to really toxic levels, BP pays thousands of people to sit on the shore.

Jesse’s flock want to keep doing what they have been doing for many years – work in their chosen profession FISHING. As mentioned above, they all want to work. Now they are working to prepare and serve meals – so many of Jesse’s flock are involved. They do this in the hope that someday it might be possible for their congregation to once again return to fishing – the livelihood known by their members as well as generations before them. These folks are the “salt of the earth”. They are honest, hardworking, and have always wanted to get paid for an honest-days’ work. They are not interested in hand-outs. They have been dealt a bad hand these last few years and have been relying on their ingenuity and entrepreneurship to change gears and find new work.

Jesse and his flock never asked for anyone’s pity. They have used the tools that God gave them to make a new life for themselves when a huge hurricane or massive oil spill crossed their path and prevented them from earning a living like they have before.

By now you might wonder how you could help this brave and resilient group who do not complain but just want to work to provide a living for they and their families. Go to www.cajununlimted.com

On this Memorial Day weekend may the LORD bless this community who have been through so much and come out of it standing on their feet. There are many others like them, but I have the privilege of meeting them and my life has been enriched by them. GOD BLESS THEM!

Dr. Thomas B. Manton, former President and CEO of the International Oil Spill Control Corporation, now living in Florida and wanting to save it from the oil spill.

Media, Politics, United Nations

Hold Turkey Responsible, Not Israel

The ‘rush to judgment’ that the United Nations has made, portraying Israel as the bad guy by enforcing the blockade is stunning. Equally as stunning is the lack of support for Israel from Washington over this incident. Or the sinking of a S. Korean Navy vessel, or Iran’s nuclear bomb ambitions, or . . .

For those in the media whose memory seems to be as short as the combined length of the beards of binLaden’s wives, Hamas is at war with Israel. Hamas has been found to re-arm itself in shipments of humanitarian aid. The reason for the blockade is to insure that only humanitarian aid goes to Gaza. Israel is all for them getting the humanitarian aid they need and seeing to it that they get it. Especially since they know, as does the administration and the UN, that Hamas controls and runs Gaza and use aid as a weapon against their own people.

This ‘Freedom Flotilla’ was not about delivering aid. It was about starting a PR campaign to make Israel the bad guy. Terrorists were on board. The ship was under the Turkish flag. The ship refused to stop to be inspected, thereby provoking what took place afterward. That was the plan and Turkey knew it. People delivering humanitarian aid don’t arm themselves with clubs, knives, and guns to use against the Israeli soldiers there to insure that only aide is delivered. And the don’t have camera crews from Al Jazeera on board.

The Free Gaza Movement announced its intention to breach Israel’s barricade of Gaza – requiring it to violate Israel’s territorial waters.

The rubber is hitting the road Mr. President. A leadership moment is needed. Recall our Ambassador to Turkey in protest. And get off the anti-Israel bandwagon in the useless United Nations. Use your bully pulpit to call a spade a spade.

Link: Turkey Responsible for Flotilla Deaths