Brushfire of Freedom

The Conservative Cowboy

Now if you are following the latest garbage that is spewing from Washington you will know that congress had yet again extended unemployment and Medicare benefits.  To be honest with you I think that I would like to get laid off and go on unemployment as it seems that congress will just continue to extended the benefits out and I could sit in my butt go to one or two “interviews” a week and get paid.

Of course I will not do that because I have too much respect for myself and not enough faith that the idiots running things will stay there long enough to really change anything that cannot be fixed.  Before I tell you how much money this will cost the taxpayers of this country I want to write about why there is a limit on unemployment benefits, I will sound very blunt and cold hearted in the next few paragraphs so be prepared.

The first and most obvious reason that unemployment benefits are temporary is that getting paid by the government to look for a job should not become a steady income.  Secondly it is not just the taxpayer that is fitting the bill but it is also your former company that helps pay for your unemployment benefits.  Now as badly as you want them to ‘Pay” for laying you off, they typically had a very good reason to get rid of you, most of the time it is a crunch in the economy, sometimes a company grows too fast, the list can go on and on, but contrary to many people’s beliefs the CEO’s and the presidents of these companies don’t sit in their offices dreaming up way so screw up your life.  It is as they say strictly business, the same way that it is strictly business when you decide to leave a company for a different job opportunity.  If you live in an “at will” state as I do, you can be hired, fired, promoted, demoted at any time.  Now of course we have unions and discrimination laws to deal with but that is how it is supposed to work.  Now at the same time the employee can leave at any time with no notice at all.  Now if you signed an employee handbook that required you to give two weeks’ notice then you are stuck there, the same way the business would be stuck if they had to deal with a union contract.  

Now I want to tell everyone that my wife has been laid off twice in the past three years, so I have seen this first hand.  We did not file for unemployment because like responsible adults we had money for a rainy day, even the second time.  So back to the big picture here, and the moment where I will sound like and a@#, most of the people that were laid off that had talent have found another job, now they could be underemployed right now but they realize that is better than being on unemployment.  Now as to the rest of you either you are not very marketable to a company because of your skills or experience.  You see for the past 15 years or so we had companies just get bigger and bigger, and as that happened they also became inefficient, hiring people that they really didn’t need.  I know it hurts but reality really does that sometimes, so if your sitting on the couch right now reading this as a break from checking your Facebook and monster accounts then get off you’re a@# and make yourself more marketable to the companies that are hiring I know that they are out there, otherwise settle for a lower paying job because some of a paycheck is better then nothing.   

So just in case you’re wondering this extension will cost $10 billion, now this is new money, not part of recovery package money that still has not been completely spent.  

The government cannot give you anything that they have not taken away from someone else, please remember that when you think about these issues.                     

Brushfire Home

Copyright 2010.  The published content is the sole property of the author.  Any copy, use, or redistribution of any portion of the material without the written consent of the owner is a violation of international copyright laws.

 Brushfire of Freedom

The Conservative Cowboy

I have written before on entitlement see (A New Generations Shift in Ideology) but today I want to talk about it in terms of our Veterans.  Hold on tight because this could get a bit ugly, and I am so angry when I read the headlines about our commander and chief talking today at Arlington National Cemetery.  I also get angry when I hear him make comments about how religion had nothing to do with the tragedy at Fort Hood.  Something along the lines that God does not justify violence.  Well I would have to counter that with a little history, a little thing called the Crusades.  Now please keep in mind that I am not bashing religion just simply stating that very violent actions are often done in the name of God.

But that is not what this week’s post is really about; I just had to bring up another point where the President of this great nation failed to do his homework.  This week’s post is about a lesson that we can learn from the very people that were honored yesterday, and that is the American Soldier.

Right now our country is full of people asking themselves what the Government is going to do for them, the government needs to provide me with low cost healthcare, the government needs to regulate the banks so they can’t take advantage of me, the unions need to get me a raise.  I am sorry but we have become a nation of whiners and entitled pansies; afraid of a hard day’s work and afraid of actually doing something to better our own situation.  Yes it is scary to have all of that responsibility on your own shoulders but it is necessary for the people of this country to shoulder the responsibility the same way that our Men and Women in uniform have been doing for over 200 years.   

You see in the military everyone has a responsibility, one that is done when in combat and one that is done in peacetime.  This country is no different, what happens when someone fails on their responsibility?  Well to use a cliché “the team is only a good as its weakest link”.  Well in this case the team is this country, and we have a whole lot of weak links right now and that number is growing as fast as the size of the Government.  

In the past in this country it didn’t matter what curves life would throw at you, or how much “bad luck” was in your life, we never asked what someone else could do to fix the problem because we all knew that we had a responsibility.  The responsibility to pick ourselves back up and fix our situation, because ultimately we were in that situation because of something that we did or that we didn’t do.  Now as a country we try to justify the bad situations by trying to find someone else to blame, our employers, our Government, our insurance company, or even our fellow man.

I don’t know why the people of this country cannot understand the simple fact that if you do something on your own to better your situation you are ultimately bettering the situation of the group.  That is a very simple logic that our Government is failing to recognize.  Failing to recognize by increasing the taxes on the successful and continuing to spoon feed the unsuccessful.  My answer to this problem is to take a page form our service men and women that we are honoring this Veterans Day and spend our time not thinking about who to blame but focusing instead on how to get out of the hole that we are in as a country, and that starts with the individual and works its way up the ladder, it cannot come from the top down as our liberal Government believes that it can.            

Brushfire Home

Copyright 2009.  The published content is the sole property of the author.  Any copy, use, or redistribution of any portion of the material without the written consent of the owner is a violation of international copyright laws.