Birth and Death

Here in the America, we celebrate birth with plenty of pictures, family, video, and the like recording for posterity this beautiful and heartfelt event.  Tears that are shed at childbirth come from the mothers' noble effort and grace, along with the tears of joy for the newborn baby, and of course, the baby itself cries upon entering this brave new world.  Childbirth is one of those seminal moments which are rightly celebrated in this country as a day of love, joy, and appreciation.  Death, on the other hand, is often treated with regret, fear, and reluctance.

You might believe that birth and death are polar opposites, but they are more akin to ying and yang and the cycle of life.  For instance, when you are within your mother's womb, this is the only world that you have ever known, your mother's womb provides everything that you could ever wish for and you are perfectly safe, yet when you are compelled down the birth canal, life as you have always known it inside your mother's womb is now over, it is therefore dead to you, and you are now born into a bright new world, naked and exposed. 

Death, on the other hand, is the cessation of life as you know it in this material world, your physical body has met its end, but your soul, the real you is now freed from the confines and limitations of its physical casing.  Your soul yet lives but your body is no more! Death should not be seen as an unmitigated horror but instead should be viewed as a time of transition from the material plane back to the spiritual plane from which we were created.  In Jeremiah 1:5 we read that: "Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee…"   This passage confirms that our existence predates this material world and that therefore our true self is our soul which is our essence and consequently that our soul is beyond time and space.

Therefore death should not be looked upon as something to fear, or as the great unknown, or as a deep and dark void, or the ending of all life, but rather as a new beginning in our spiritual quest to find our way back to the First Source, which is God.   The regrets of material death are often of a life not examined, of goals not achieved, of mistakes made and not rectified, and for some, a death that is unexpected and comes far too soon.  Too many of us live as if the bell will never toll for us, but in fact, it tolls for all of us.  Our physical body cannot last for eternity, that is not its nature, therefore it behooves us to recognize this earlier as compared to later for we read in Matthew 6:21 that: ”For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."  You cannot take your physical body or your earthly treasures into Heaven, but you will take your soul and its growth and knowledge into the spiritual realm for its re-birth.  Ultimately, what you leave here on earth is your legacy that you have pass onto others.

Birth and death, ever together, never to part, you cannot have one without the other.

Taxation is the Power to Destroy

Chief Supreme Court Justice John Marshall stated in 1819 that: “an unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, a power to destroy; because there is a limit beyond which no institution and no property can bear taxation.”  Taxation is a power which is so strong, that in theory, if unchecked, will effectively supersede all other rights that you have.  For instance, if in regards to the labor that you create and are compensated for, suddenly a law is passed, allowing the Federal Government to legally confiscate all of your labor produced, what then do you have?   Materially you have nothing and therefore you are in effect "enslaved" to the Government, in which it is their discretion which will determine what you receive in compensation, if anything.  If you own nothing, if everything you labor for is confiscated from you, but in return the Government provides you with free housing, free food, free transportation, and free healthcare, you are no longer a free man, you are in fact now subservient and dependent upon that Government whether justified or not.

Taxation of the general population as a whole is something that should be respected and feared, as George Washington said, "Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master."  Without some form of taxation, or import duties, or estate tax, or tariffs, or the selling of public lands, the Federal Government has no money to operate on.  However, with these taxes, the Federal Government has the power to take away or confiscate from those that labor and redistribute that said money to parties or organizations that are in-favor, and to punish or to destroy people and parties which are out-of-favor.

The more money and assets that are taken from those that honestly produce them, the more power that is relinquished by those individuals to the Government, than the less freedom, the less mobility, and the less incentive to produce are received in return.  If everything that you produce or that you own is subject to confiscation, why continue to produce or to work at all?  The Government in and of itself, produces nothing, it may compel others to work for it, it may confiscate from others to help sustain itself, but Government is ultimately powerless without the labor or the material assets of others.

 The bigger that Government gets, the more that it has to take in order to sustain itself.  Even worse is a Government that is allowed the luxury of running deficits, in which case, the full taxation or confiscation is put off from today's generation only to be put on tomorrow's generation which has reaped no benefit from it, but will pay the penalty for it. 

America's entire battle for independence was based on the theory that it was not fair for the colonies to be taxed and to not also be represented in Parliament and therefore to have a voice in their own country.  However, in order to effect the collection of taxes, Great Britain increased the presence of their troops and the quartering of its troops in the colonies.  It was therefore the collective pressure of the new unjustified taxes along with the force to collect the taxes that led to the American Revolution.

The power of taxation is the power to destroy, it always has been and it always will be.  If what you labor for is involuntarily taken from you, then you are no longer master of your own self, no longer master of your fate, no longer master of your own liberty, but a tool in the machine of the Government.

Property Taxes are Dangerous

When you are born, you pretty much own yourself, although recent nanny state activities, have wreak havoc on this most fundamental of our rights.  Do you remember the Beatles song, the Taxman, it goes like this:

                If you drive a car, I’ll tax the street,
                If you try to sit, I’ll tax your seat,
                If you get too cold , I’ll tax the heat,
                If you take a walk , I’ll tax your feet.

Yes, the taxman is something to fear.  You work hard for the money and according to statasticbrain.com, as of 2013, 64.5% of Americans own their own home, but only 29% own their own home free and clear and without any encumbrances (e.g. mortgage).   Still, let's take that higher number of 64.5% that own their own homes and recognize that when you own your home, you are, in theory, the master of your own castle.

However, ownership of your own home does not mean that there aren't still expenses involved and here I'm not referring to the upkeep of your own property but the property taxes that you are compelled by law to pay.  For instance, despite your ownership of your residence, if you fail to pay your property taxes you will be subject eventually to forfeiture of the actual property itself, so paying property taxes is a mandatory expense that must be paid.

The next question is how are property taxes assessed?  This does vary from state-to-state, in which some states have property taxes that are well under 1% of the value of the residence, such as Louisiana (mainly because of the $75,000 homestead exemption) and then there are states such as New Jersey with property tax rates of nearly 2%.  Before you look at these numbers and simply conclude that this is just the cost of doing business you would be wise to recognize that property taxes are not static.  On the good side, property taxes can be re-assessed and go down as they did for most property owners after the housing crash of 2008.  On the other hand, in most states, property taxes have historically gone up for re-assessments based on perceived market value of your home on a year by year basis.

Now all of the above assumes that the formula that creates the property tax bill year after year will remain the same.  That is to say, the property value, which often consists of the land value, the structure value, exemptions, millage rate, and perhaps other miscellaneous items depending on your county, will be consistent.  But in fact, there is no guarantee that that will be the case for future events.  Because property taxes are utilized for schools, roads, fire departments, police, public employees, pensions, and the like, they are the essential source of county revenue and the county commissioners have the power to change the millage rate and formula for assessing property taxes.  Consequently, a rapid and unexpected increase in property taxes in your community would have the dual negative effect of lowering your property value and increasing your property expenses. 

Property taxes are dangerous because it is not you that have control of that expense, but bureaucrats who may find it expedient to tax you beyond your limit.  Additionally, think of it in another way, when you buy a television, it is yours, there aren't any more additional taxes, but this is not the case with your home.  You own it, but do you really own it?

Only God Can Judge Me

From time-to-time you see bumper stickers on cars and tattoos on people with the saying "Only God Can Judge Me".  The popularity of this saying is inspired by the Bible, people's own lives, but also from the fact that prominent rappers such as Master P and Tupac have used it as their album title and as an album song, respectively.  Famous personalities such as Tupac and Zlatan Ibrahimovic also have that particular saying tattooed onto their body.  It's a fairly popular tattoo, but it does make me wonder, why?

First off, the tattoo itself comes across initially as being fairly defensive.  It is like the tattoo is put there to compensate for your own inadequacies and possibly questionable decisions you have already made in your life.  I mean, it isn't the type of tattoo that you're going to get when you are first born as some sort of warning sign to the world, but rather a tattoo that you will probably get after a particular difficult period in your life or a tragic event.  It's your way of creating distance between you and your erstwhile critics and requesting that those that are prone to judge you, should leave you alone.

The Bible is full of verses that reflect or speak or admonish us about judging and God's Judgment, such as Matthew 7:1-3: "Judge not, that ye be not judged.  For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?"

Also there is Luke 6:37: "Judge not, and ye shall not be judged…"   Additionally we have John 7:24: "Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment."  Within the Bible, there are numerous verses about judging and judgment but never is there the actual statement that "Only God Can Judge Me". 

Further, while the tattoo seems to say what it says:  "Only God Can Judge Me"; it also appears to invoke God as your personal protector and defender, but it doesn't go about it quite in the right way.  First off, the statement is setup wrong, although it states: "Only God Can Judge Me", the fact of the matter is just about anyone can judge you, rightly or wrongly, because the word "can", means "to be able", and that ability pretty much rests with everyone.  For instance, I "can" judge you, silently or not, wrongly or not, and you can't stop me from judging you.  However, if the statement said "Only God May Judge Me", you are stating that only God has your expressed permission to judge you, and anyone else that judges you is out of order and irrelevant.  That is a more powerful statement and hence more meaningful.  It is somewhat akin to saying "all hands off, my life is between me and my God".

But in the end, when it really does come to your actual judgment day, it won't even be God judging you.  While some may greet this news with a great smile on their face or some with confusion, the actual judgment of you will be done by yourself.  However, this judgment will be done without equivocation, without excuse, without error, but just with Truth.  You will face yourself, the real you, the whole you, and nothing but you, and within that facedown correct judgment will be rendered. 

IP Address

You are either an unusual person, very poor, or very old, if you aren't utilizing the internet.  The internet, however, is a road that is well monitored.  For instance, your Internet Protocol (IP) Address is assigned by your Internet Service Provider (ISP) and not by yourself.  The fact that your ISP (such as Comcast, Verizon, AT&T) provides you with your IP address means with a certainty that they know your name and your address.  So if you are under the mistaken impression that surfing the net is something that you do with no outside agencies being cognizant of what sites you go to and what things you download, you are sadly mistaken.   Even if most of your internet surfing is done in the confines of your own home and your own network, the actual surfing is more akin to you traveling down a public road with your stops, your conversations,  and your activities duly noted, probably in vivid detail.  For some people this isn't a problem, isn't even an issue, but for many people this is more than a little creepy, it just seems wrong.

When surfing the internet, you are far better off recognizing that all the websites that you visit, your emails, your Facebook account, your tweets, are subject to the Government or its monitoring agencies being able to decode them, to intercept them, to monitor them, and to record them, and all of this to be tracked back to yourself or to your family or your network.  Any expectation of privacy and confidentiality that you believe that you have is probably mistaken.   Also, if you are under the misimpression that perhaps you are protected from all of this because your internet activity is being accomplished through a private, non-government company, you will find that most all privately or publicly-held corporations will willingly give up your information to proper Government agenciesnot because they so much want to "rat you out" but because they are under heavy bureaucratic regulations and have a vested interest in maintaining their business model, and consequently their excuse to you is simply one of them being compelled to obey a court or a superior order.

While there are plenty of things that you as a consumer can do to encrypt your data, I believe this is missing the main point, which is why are we allowing Government agencies to monitor and snoop on private citizens without probable cause to begin with.  That is to say, allowing some Government agency to monitor anybody 24/7 and there certainly is a good chance that that person is in violation of some law, whether obscure or not.  Additionally, we have been taught that it isn't nice to eavesdrop or to try to listen to private conversations that we are not privy too. 

The internet is a wonderful source of information, of ease of communication, of entertainment, and the like, but it leaves a visible trail of our activity, our words, and our actions for those that are meant to be in service to us, but for all practical purposes behave as our masters.

Intoxication

Defining intoxication is somewhat akin to the definition of pornography, "I know it when I see it".  Although, through an analysis of the blood alcohol concentration (BAC) one can obtain a reliable reading of the BAC of a selected individual, and from there induce their degree of intoxication, that number in and of itself is in most cases not proof-positive of actual intoxication.  I am not here discussing arbitrary legal definitions of intoxication by percentage of BAC, which can change from year-to-year, state-to-state, and country-to-country, but actual intoxication.

We can say with a certainty that someone with a BAC of .00% is not intoxicated, that they are in fact, sober; whereas someone with a BAC of .40% is in real danger of actual death or could in fact, be dead.  Somewhere between these two numbers, there lies an individual that is intoxicated.  But even then, it's not that easy.  For instance, two people of the same sex and of the same weight, drinking the same type of drinks and having the same percentage of BAC will not behave exactly the same way.  Alcohol affects people in different ways, because people are different, process alcoholic drinks differently, their bodies are also different, and invariably therefore have different outcomes.  That is not to say, that alcohol doesn't impair you, it can and it does, but that particular impairment will differ from individual to individual even with the same BAC, even, in fact, the same individual with the same BAC but on a different day.

Additionally, those that are alcoholic and that have been alcoholics for a long period of time have built up tolerance levels to the alcohol that they consume.  Consequently, even with a BAC at .10%, a true alcoholic may not be impaired at all despite the so-called objective evidence that seems plain as day.  This therefore points out an obvious fallacy in strictly relying on BAC levels to determine intoxication; they can and will be in error. 

A meaningful definition of intoxication is "the person’s speech, balance, coordination or behavior is noticeably affected".  This affection is because alcohol is ultimately a depressant and consequently alcohol slows down your central nervous system, decreases activity in your prefrontal cortex, which then impairs and impacts your coordination and your ability to make good judgments.

Another problem with alcohol and intoxication is the fact that alcohol is not immediately felt in your body and your brain.  That is it to say, the recognition that you have drunk too much alcohol, far too quickly, may be something that you are not cognizant of, until significantly after the fact.  In other words, that it's not just the quantity of drinks consumed, nor just the amount of time spent having those drinks, but critically, the amount of time spent and quantity consumed, when you first start drinking on a particular day that can intoxicate you.  That is why binge drinking in all of its myriad forms, is the most dangerous type of drinking and the most toxic.

BAC levels that exceed the legal standard of alcohol intoxication are in most cases, a presumption of intoxication, but not proof-positive of intoxication.   Real intoxication is far more nuanced than this, not nearly so cut and dry, except in those cases in which a person clearly cannot balance themselves or can't construct a coherent sentence. 

Frozen assets

Picture yourself as a very successful human being; you have the nice house, the nice car, and a slew of assets.  You don't have the need for physical gold or silver and the amount of cash that you carry on a given day is minimal.  The bulk of your assets are held in a couple of brokerage accounts and you don't have any foreign bank accounts and have never considered having one.  Life is good. 

However, one day you try to access your brokerage account to make a transfer and to access funds and instead you find that your account appears to be compromised.  Right then, you begin to feel a tightening in your chest, but you soldier on, assuming that your account has perhaps been hacked but instead upon logging into your account further you read a strange message saying that: "By order of the United States Department of Justice the assets of this account have been seized and a restraining order on this account has been issued".  Quickly, you verify the calendar date and you notice that it is indeed not April fool's day and with sweaty palms you dial up your frozen brokerage account and talk to your contact there.  It's difficult for you to even speak because your throat is so dry but upon getting your brokerage representative on the phone you are able to stammer out what appears to be the impossible that is happening to you.  After being placed on an endless hold and then transferred to one department after another, some man with a halting voice indicates that your account has indeed been seized, that you no longer have the rights to the account and therefore your log-in and password information have been secured.  Within a minute, you are forcefully locked out of your brokerage account, repeated attempts to even log-into your account are denied and you give up.  You then try all of your other brokerage and bank accounts and are unsuccessful in all of them in getting into your account.

You are grateful that you still have an internet connection and you waste no time in finding the best attorney that handles these types of asset forfeitures.  You are no longer nervous, or halting; you are instead hyper-focused because you realize that your life as you know it is on the line.  Good attorneys are always busy but you press the urgency of the matter and within an hour you get a phone call back from your attorney.   He states that the Government has the right to freeze your assets upon probable cause from a grand jury and further that in the case of United States v. Monsanto, your assets may be frozen when the Government presents probable cause to a Judge that in all likelihood, that if convicted, the assets or property that you currently own would be subject to forfeiture.   

Your attorney patiently explains to you that therefore the very monies that you need in order to build a proper defense are not currently available to you, but he promises to investigate further.  Additionally, he indicates that no doubt an indictment is in the process of being issued against you but because of the inefficiencies and bloat of government agencies, the coordination of these activities can be thrown off.

You slump into your easy-chair, befuddled and confused.  You haven't committed any crime, and even if you had, isn't this America, in which you are innocent until proven guilty!?  Isn't there a thing called due process?  If the government takes everything away from you, how is it possible for you to mount a successful defense?  Is this going to be a modern-day version of Kafka's "The Trial"?

Civil and criminal forfeiture are becoming more and more common in the United States, most people aren’t concerned about it, perhaps even support it, but this type of immense power can easily be abused.  When everything that you have is taken away from you, you are at the mercy of the Government and its' objectives.  Even with assets, facts, and the wherewithal to fight the Government it's never a fair fight; take away one of those supporting legs and the fight is all but over.

Electricity

Modern life is full of conveniences that we take for granted, such as electricity.  In my community, little flash outages of just a few seconds seem to occur a little too frequently but they are really a very small inconvenience and just essentially mean the resetting of clocks and before I got my surge/battery backup protector on my computer desktop, a loss of some computer information.  However, from time-to-time there is an actually outage of perhaps up to twelve hours.  Again, that is mainly an inconvenience, and I usually step out of my house to verify that all of the houses in my neighborhood have a power outage as opposed to immediately running to my circuit box which is in the basement.  They say that misery loves company and when it comes to power outages if it's street-wide you kind of are relaxed about it, but if it's just you and it's not your circuit box, then that's a real expensive problem!

Without electricity in your home, you no longer have lights, heat, air-conditioning, fans, internet, cable, or the ability to use any electronic device that uses electricity directly (such as your oven).  Basically the only devices that you will still be able to use are your portable devices that are currently charged.  Whether you are able to use your cell phone or not depends a lot on how much traffic is being generated to your cell tower, whether that tower has electricity and if not, how much batteries backup the cell tower has.  Unfortunately, when we most need to use our cell phones such as in a real emergency, this is the time when they so often fail us.  Consequently, this is a very valid reason to have an actual working house phone, in which a power outage in most every circumstance will not affect its needful operation.

Although power outages can occur for many reasons they are typically more frequent during extreme weather conditions, either the weather is too cold and the ice, for instance, has taken down necessary power lines, or it is too hot and the power grid is over-burdened.  From my perspective, I prefer a power outage during cold weather, mainly because that means perishables will last longer, but more importantly with enough blankets you can sleep in cold weather but in hot weather, without air-conditioning or fans, you can't sleep; and quite frankly one way to persevere during a power outage is to simply go to sleep and hope for better news when you awaken.

For those that are in very poor health, or with little infants, an electricity outage has much more significant consequences.  If your good health depends upon using devices that connect to electricity your health becomes imperiled without electricity.  Additionally, if you are dependent upon city water or well water for your daily needs this water may become compromised or unavailable to you.  The lack of electricity and our taking for granted the reliable availability of electricity is something that we really don't appreciate until it is gone.  Some people are more prepared than others, they have supplies setup for an emergency, and they also have available a portable power generator for just these types of situations.  The rest of us are perhaps too complacent or foolish to prepare for improbable events that have life-changing consequences, perhaps we shouldn't be.

Community Service is Involuntary Servitude

There are three basic types of involuntary community service, there is community service which must be actively performed in order to graduate high school, for instance; there is community service that is compulsory when convicted of certain crimes, such as a DUI; and there is community service which a defendant is sentenced to do at the discretion of the judge.  Let us take each one of these in turn and discuss them.

The Bethlehem Area School District requires that their high school students complete sixty hours of community service in order to graduate and to receive a diploma.   This requirement was adjudicated and upheld by the Courts as to not be in violation of either the 1st Amendment, and somewhat surprisingly not in violation of the 13th Amendment which states: " Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted…"   I'm not a lawyer, nor do I consider myself an expert of the law, but common sense, itself, dictates that not being able to receive your diploma when you have achieved all the attributes to receive a diploma, except for involuntary servitude, is a specific punishment, in which you have not been duly convicted of anything.  What I'm not arguing is the merits of performing voluntary community service, which may be quite commendable, but the compulsion to do so in order to receive your diploma.  This compulsory community service is wrong, it may be well-intentioned, but it could also be easily amended to providing for those who perform this community service voluntarily a certificate and the accolades for doing so, as opposed to making it a condition to receive a diploma for attending a public school.

The second type of compulsory community service is being duly convicted of a crime, such as a DUI which is often a misdemeanor, and then having mandated per a court of law that within that conviction there is also a minimum compulsory community service, such as forty hours for having committed the crime.  Our 6th Amendment gives us the right to counsel, so for those that can afford an attorney, we can hire one.  However, for indigent or ignorant defendants, you may be legally entitled to a court-appointed attorney but doing so may entail filling out paperwork, disclosing income in which you may end up having to pay some amount of money for the court-appointed attorney, and petitioning the court for said attorney.  You may find yourself, therefore, without an attorney and duly convicted of said crime and forced to perform community service as part of your sentencing.   The crux of the matter really comes down to the fact that the court sentences you to community service because it recognizes that to the general public excessive jail time for misdemeanor DUI convictions is unpalatable but somehow community service isn't.

The third type of compulsory community service is when the sentencing terms are left to the discretion of the judge and as part of the sentence the judge imposes community service upon the convicted defendant.  The issue here is that the defendant should have the option to refuse community service as a punishment, as long as he is also cognizant of the alternative punishment(s) that will take its place for having done so.  The decision to reject community service should be left to the defendant, who may or may not find involuntary servitude to be acceptable as opposed to a different punishment.

Involuntary servitude is not the American way, it's an abomination, and yet another example of how the State imposesunjustifiably its will against the people.

America and the Rise of Japan

America dropped not one but two atomic bombs on Japan which entailed massive Japanese casualties.  Additionally, in our low-altitude incendiary raids of Tokyo, wired.com stated: "Sixty-three percent of Tokyo’s commercial area, and 18 percent of its industry, was destroyed. An estimated 267,000 buildings burned to the ground."  At the end of World War II, Japan, was a defeated and humbled nation, yet who would have predicted that by 1978, Japan as a nation, an island state of approximately 115 million peoples and with limited natural resources, would have become the second biggest economy in the world a status it maintained all the way up until 2010 when it was finally surpassed by China, a nation with a much greater land mass and a ten-fold quantity of peoples.

At the end of World War II, the United States effected several changes that were beneficial to Japan in the ensuing years.  Women in Japan were granted universal suffrage, war reparations were first suspended and then forgiven, the Japanese military was dismantled and demilitarized, a favorable exchange rate between the yen and the dollar was established, favorable trade conditions were setup between Japan and the United States and most notably in the Korean war, massive exports were produced by Japan to help support that war effort. 

Japan was also very successful in taking the technology that was previously developed during World War II for military ends and converting that knowhow and expertise into producing commercial goods that were successfully exported throughout the world, such as automobiles, steel, semiconductors, televisions and other hi-tech devices.   During this time of transition, Japan moved from a society that had a large agricultural component to one that was dedicated to providing and exporting finished goods at competitive pricing throughout the world.

After the defeat of Japan in World War II, Japan was an occupied territory, in which General MacArthur was essentially in command of the American occupation.  General MacArthur was successful in such a way that although the Americans ran a tight ship and had a firm hand within Japan it worked without any real protest from the Japanese. MacArthur also help established the Romanization system in which Japanese script characters were replaced with Roman script letters which consequently made the translation of Japanese words easier to comprehend and assimilate for Americans. In return, during the occupation, the Japanese were for the most part given free rein to develop their own version of democracy, to create free trade unions, and to implement land reform.

Japan could not be the country that it is today if it wasn't for their defeated peoples of World War II, willingly embracing the new system, the new rules, the new government, and devoting their energies and work-ethic to becoming successful for themselves and for their country.  Rather than being resentful or even hateful to their occupiers, the Japanese went about their business which ultimately ended in them becoming the second largest economic giant in the world. 

While we may take the Japanese success for granted, today, we shouldn't.   Despite different cultures, different religions, different racial characteristics, different histories, the United States and Japan were successful together and this continues until the present day.   

The 11th Hour

I just love American idioms and I also love learning about their origin.  The "11th hour" of today, refers to coming to a deal at the last moment, when almost all hope of coming to a successful deal appears to have vanished, but alas it hasn't!  It can also refer to accomplishing something at the very last instant, such as what a procrastinator might do, or being up against the wall in a "do or die" moment.

The origin of this phrase refers back to Matthew: 20.  In which it is stated: "For the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is an householder, which went out early in the morning to hire labourers into his vineyard. And when he had agreed with the labourers for a penny a day, he sent them into his vineyard. And he went out about the third hour, and saw others standing idle in the marketplace, And said unto them; Go ye also into the vineyard, and whatsoever is right I will give you. And they went their way. Again he went out about the sixth and ninth hour, and did likewise. And about the eleventh hour he went out, and found others standing idle, and saith unto them, Why stand ye here all the day idle? They say unto him, Because no man hath hired us. He saith unto them, Go ye also into the vineyard; and whatsoever is right, that shall ye receive."  And further: "And when they came that were hired about the eleventh hour, they received every man a penny. But when the first came, they supposed that they should have received more; and they likewise received every man a penny."  And finally we have: " But he answered one of them, and said, Friend, I do thee no wrong: didst not thou agree with me for a penny?  Take that thine is, and go thy way: I will give unto this last, even as unto thee.  Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own? Is thine eye evil, because I am good? So the last shall be first, and the first last: for many be called, but few chosen."

First a little background on the hours as described in this passage.  In the United States we are use to the daylight being longer in the summertime and consequently the daylight being shorter in the wintertime,  because with our modern clocks we divide time into equal hours of equal length throughout the year.  In Roman times, there were also twelve hours of daylight and 12 hours of darkness, but the amount of physical time of those hours would vary depending upon the season, so the 11th hour in Jesus' time really did refer to the absolute last hour of daylight.

A first reading of this Bible passage brings to many readers a feeling of injustice, after all, the initial laborers had to labor all day in the sun and heat of the day, whereas the latecomers had not had to deal with that burden, nor the length of the time in the vineyard, yet each laborer received exactly the same payment.  This seems wrong, but is it?  The householder has not broken his agreement with the initial laborers, they were paid exactly what they had contracted for, so the complaint becomes one of "I did more and they did less for the same compensation."  But isn't that envy at its worse or possibly regret that you were the early bird? 

A further interpretation is to take the above passage as an allegory in which the householder is God, and the laborers are me and you.  Our laboring in God's vineyard and his invitation for us to labor there is a call for us to come to him and join him in our salvation.  Looking at it this way, we should rejoice if we were amongst the first that went into the vineyard for that means we not only listened to but we also obeyed the word of God.  For those, that came later, they too rejoiced for having being saved up and till the 11th hour.  For we must be mindful to remember we can only truly be saved when we are still within the daylight or "light" of God's presence and not in the darkness of denial or abandonment. The payment for all of us laborers should be the same, which is paradise for all.  There is not a lesser paradise for latecomers, former sinners; it is all the same salvation.  That is our precious payment.  That is the grace of our all merciful God. 

Unsecured Debt

There are two basic forms of debt in this world, unsecured and secured debt.  Your preference when creating debt is for unsecured debt, because unsecured debt basically means that the creditor is relying upon your good faith to pay the monies owed back, whereas with secured debt the creditor will not hesitate in "securing" their debt back from you, by seizing or re-obtaining their collateral such as an automobile or home through implementing the terms and conditions of the contract which you executed with them.  Consequently, this means that with a car loan, that "your" car can be re-possessed when you are in material default of your terms and conditions with your lender without notice to yourself.  Simply stated, it is a misnomer to believe that you "own" a vehicle or a home if you have a car note or mortgage payment, you will only own these items when you have the proper deed or title to them and that is accomplished only when they have been paid in full.

Credit cards were once given out to a select few, but in recent years, credit cards have become available to virtually everyone, even students, with no demonstrable income.   Credit cards are the prime example of unsecured debt; the cards are issued to recipients as unsecured loans, in which the credit card issuers believe that they will receive in return at least a monthly minimum payment from their recipients.  However, for various reasons, there are a significant amount of credit card users who are unable to make their payments on time, or to pay even the minimum, due to loss of job, a combination of too much debt and too little income, health problems, irresponsibility, or other reasons. 

On the surface, because the debt is unsecured, it appears that the consumer is ahead of the curve, after all they still have the material goods, or the memories of delightful dinners or nightclub experiences, and the creditor cannot legally collect or re-possess any of the items purchased by the credit card user.  However, unfortunately, that is just the short-term viewpoint.  The end result of failing to live up to your credit card obligations will often result in a damaged credit score which leads to higher insurance rates, higher loan rates, and in some cases reduced employment opportunities because the potential employer when seeing a low credit score marks it against you as someone that is in lacking in maturity, discipline, or decision-making.

However, it does get worse, credit card issuers can attempt to get a court judgment against you, which will allow them to assert their rights to collect their debt.   Many consumers ignore their court summons to their regret and are thereby subject in most cases to a court judgment against them.  Not appearing in court and not defending yourself is a critical consumer misjudgment.  Creditors that apply for court judgments are counting on two things; the first is that you won't appear and that they will therefore win, the second is that you will appear and that a settlementwill be agreed to (perhapsat 50% of what is owed)  which will be then be legally binding between both parties with specific payment terms.   There is, however, a third possibility, even if the facts appear to be against you, often the creditor has information that is missing or is in conflict with your own records of your statements, payments, fees, notes, and penalties.  It behooves you to dispute those discrepancies and to state so in front of a judge.  No judge, in good standing, will rule against you, but will instead postpone the hearing or transfer it to a higher or different court.  This postponement may be enough for the creditor to lose heart in pursuing you and your debts.  Creditors and debt collectors look for easy targets that will wilt when subject to a court of law. 

You shouldn't wilt, and you should recognize that most, if not all, unsecured debt can be discharged in bankruptcy, and in most cases that bankruptcy will erase any unsecured judgments against you.  While bankruptcy should never be your first option, it is the trump card that bears witnessing to, because in bankruptcy the creditors of unsecured debt will receive in almost all cases, nothing.

Sheriff Joe Arpaio

I don't even know the Sheriff's name in my own community and I can only list one other Sheriff's name in the entire country and probably that is because of some sort of notoriety.  I don't live in Arizona, I really don't understand why anyone does, all that dry heat and it's not Las Vegas, I mean, what's the point.  Anyway, I digress, the one sheriff that I hear about time and time again is Sheriff Arpaio of Maricopa County, which contains Arizona's largest city which is Phoenix.  Although, it has been a couple generations since Barry Goldwater, Arizona's favorite son, ran as the Presidential candidate in 1964, the Republican power still controls most of the reins of Maricopa County.  It that wasn't the case, Arpaio, a Republican would not be the six-time elected Sheriff.

At age 81, Arpaio appears to be the type of man who wants to leave this world with his proverbial boots on.  Arpaio isn't someone that is easily intimidated, he has his power, he is happy with that power, and he will fight you hard to maintain that power and make you regret fighting him should you do so.  Arpaio is not the type of man who goes down quietly, fights dirty, enjoys the limelight, and embraces the stigma of being considered a xenophobe and a demagogue.   Arpaio portrays himself as being "America's toughest Sheriff", tough on crime, tough on criminals, true to the American flag, supports his fellow officers, and that plays well with the conservative core that supports him.  Of course, essentially, he is a man that believes in a police state with himself being the sole determinant of what he judges as being right or wrong.

Sheriff Arpaio is a case in point as to why we should have term limits for elected public servants.  The longer a man like Arpaio is in office, the more power, the more beholden the other players must be to him.  Arpaio has been accused again and again of racial profiling specifically against Latinos and a recent Federal Judge's ruling affirms that Arpaio's policies violated the Constitution and the Civil Rights Act.  As for the inmates that Sheriff Arpaio is so tough on, this too has been found by a Federal Judge to be a violation of their Constitutional rights.

A fundamental way that Arpaio has maintained his power is to have a grand jury constantly indict Board of Supervisor's members that do not conform with his megalomania or don't properly support Arpaio's law-enforcement ambitions or goals.  Arpaio is built from the mold of those that feel that they are above the law,  and Arpaio uses the law as his own personal bully pulpit, under the guise of upholding the law that he is do disdainful of when applied to himself and his and his cohorts' actions.  Those that support Sheriff Arpaio most vociferously are those that are in no danger of being harassed by Arpaio and consequently have nothing to fear from him or his actions.  To them, Arpaio is like their own personal guard dog, but in reality Arpaio is a thief.  He steals from the public virtue, he steals from our Christian values, he steals from the American dream, and he locks down the Golden Door.

The Hypocrisy of being Pro-Abortion and Anti-Smoking

Life is full of plenty of hypocrisies that have glaring holes in them; I'm going to concentrate on one of the most blatant examples of pure hypocrisy which is those that are adamant supporters of a woman's right to chose and at the same time hold a viewpoint which is vehemently anti-tobacco.  Those positions are not consistent to each other and the implication of this has disturbing consequences.

Per current American law, a legally-aged woman is the sole determinant of whether she desires to have an abortion or not, subject to certain State laws.  Currently, it is estimated that around 90% of all abortions are performed within the first trimester, in which a trimester is defined as the first twelve weeks after gestation, even though it's general accepted that at eight weeks the embryo has become a fetus.  Being what that may, the abortion laws are clearly written in a way that it is the woman that controls the decisions about her body in regards to the embryo or the fetus that she carries within.   It is the woman that is the master of her own body, enough so, that she has the legal right to terminate a potential and viable life within her own uterus.  This means as a consequence that the embryo or fetus that she carries within her has no rights, subject to certain States' restrictions. 

In regards to smoking, in general it's legal to smoke at age eighteen, although there are exceptions to this rule, with the most notable exception being in NYC in which the smoking age was recently raised to 21.  There are in addition, quite a few restrictions associated with smoking which varies from state-to-state or county to county, or community to community, such as: prohibition of smoking in public places, such as bars, restaurants, and some public housing; prohibition at work, and even prohibition in public outdoor places.  

The ostensibly primary reason that a woman is allowed to abort a fetus legally is that it is her choice, it is her body, yet that abortion will terminate with prejudice a potential human life.  A person, who smokes, however, may or may not harm their own physical body by smoking, depending on numerous factors, yet the restrictions on smoking are increasing, it appears, day by day.

In fact, those that are pro-abortion and anti-smoking are also quite restrictive on most other things.  They are for carbon emissions restrictions, mandatory health insurance, re-distribution of income, stricter health standards, and always and forever more restrictive laws, more restrictive regulations, and more restrictive penalties for those that do not conform to their specific form of thinking.

The truth of the matter is that those who are pro-abortion and anti-smoking, are pro-abortion because they do not want "those other people" to have children; their feeling is that there is enough poor, unintelligent and morally inept people already, that it is therefore their higher duty to see that those misguided people don't add to our collective misery by accidently procreating while in reality all they really wanted to do was just have some sex.  As for smoking, well, that is something that is so uncouth, so dirty, smelly, and disgusting, that it shouldn't be permitted at all, or if permitted, should be well hidden from the public.

Those that are pro-abortion and anti-smoking are in fact, promoting their own sick utopian society.  In that society, everyone will know their place, and everything will be controlled just so. 

Everett Dirksen -- Civil Rights Hero

In this year of the 50th Anniversary of the historic Civil Rights Bill that passed in 1964, there are many people that deserve our credit and praise for the passage of this important landmark bill in which its passage mandated that voting rights were liberalized and applied equally, desegregation was banished, and equal rights were provided to all.   While this was not the end of discrimination in the United States, this legislation helped to build a solid foundation to enable the disenfranchised to be established on a more equal footing now and into the future and this battle continues onto this day.

While one most give a great deal of credit to President Johnson who signed the legislation and as former Senate Majority Leader had the connections, the persona, and the power to persuade recalcitrant Senators to cast their votes for the Civil Rights Bill, LBJ was not the man of the hour.  That man instead was none other than Everett Dirksen of Illinois, the Senator Minority Leader. 

In 1964, the Civil Rights Bill passed the House on February 10, 1964, and was then submitted to the Senate in which when the bill was submitted, the "Southern Bloc" began their effective filibuster, and unless the Senate was to come up with a 2/3rd majority to force cloture on the filibuster, then the Civil Rights Bill would be stuck in the Senate and therefore not come up for vote and consequently it would fail.   From 1927 to 1963, cloture had been attempted on eleven filibusters and each and every time it had failed.  During the time of this filibuster, Senator Dirksen began a collaboration with Senate Majority Whip Humphrey, Senate Majority Leader Mansfield, Senate Minority Whip Kuchel, and Attorney General Kennedy to make modifications that would allow Dirksen to convince fellow Northern Republicans to support the Civil Rights Bill without substantially weakening it or changing the bill in such a way that the House would no longer support it.   In addition to that collaboration, Dirksen's further responsibility was to convince his Northern Republican cohorts that their true interests laid in supporting the party of Lincoln, of emancipation, of the freedom of all men, in conformance with our great moral principles, and to not forge an alliance with the Southern Democratic party against these civil rights and thereby to join hands with the Southern extremists and the remnants of a nation once divided and at civil war.

 On June 10, 1964, Dirksen made his speech to the Senate in defense of the cloture and the civil rights bill in which he invoked Victor Hugo that: "stronger than all the armies is an idea whose time has come."  Further he went on to say: "The time has come for equality of opportunity in sharing in government, in education, and in employment. It will not be stayed or denied. It is here."  Dirksen referenced the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, and he discussed also the sacrifices in blood, sweat, and tears of our Black American brethren in wars fought on behalf of America.  He also referenced Lincoln, Jefferson, the Declaration of Independence, our Constitution, and Gettysburg.  Later that day, cloture was passed in the Senate and the filibuster was over.  On June 19, 1964, the Senate bill passed by a 73-27 Senate vote in which 27 out of the 33 Republican Senators voted in the affirmative, a higher percentage than the Democratic vote of 44 out of 67.  Of the 21 Southern Senate Democrats, only 1 voted for the Civil Rights Bill, Yarborough of Texas, with the end result being that the infamous "Southern Bloc" had been vanquished.

President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act on July 2, 1964, and said this: "We believe that all men have certain unalienable rights. Yet many Americans do not enjoy those rights…. But it cannot continue. Our Constitution, the foundation of our Republic, forbids it. The principles of our freedom forbid it. Morality forbids it. And the law I will sign tonight forbids it."

Costco CEO Pay

There is no better way to lead than by example.  Way too many CEOs of publically held corporations make way too much money despite the fact that they are beholden to a Board of Directors and that their salaries and their compensation package are for the most part, quite transparent.  Many articles have come out in recent years in which it is stated that CEO pay in ratio to worker pay has exploded and in fact according to the Huffington Post: "today Fortune 500 CEOs make 204 times regular workers on average, Bloomberg found. The ratio is up from 120-to-1 in 2000, 42-to-1 in 1980 and 20-to-1 in 1950."  Are CEOs 204 times more valuable than the average worker, which is an increase of over 1000% since 1950?  That answer is absolutely not.  What has increased 1000% over the ensuing years is the CEOs rapacious greed, which has been rubberstamped by their dereliction-of-duty Board of Directors.

Fortunately, not every public company follows this footprint.  For instance, there is Costco which ranks as #22 on the Fortune 500 list with yearly revenues in 2013 of nearly $100 billion dollars.  Their current CEO is Craig Jelinek, who replaced former CEO James Sinegal (co-founder) in 2012.  Jelinek's salary is $650,000 annually with a bonus of up to $200,000, and stock compensation based upon company performance which can add a couple more million dollars in compensation to him.  According to Costco the average worker makes $20.89/hour, before overtime and benefits, or about $43,451/year.  Additionally, the annual turnover rate is less than 6%, which is incredibly low for a retailer, with nearly 88% of all Costco employees receiving health insurance.

This Costco philosophy of being fair to their employees is also part and parcel of their business model to their customers in which Costco is known as marking up their products no more than 14-15 percent over cost.  The reason behind this belief is that Costco feels that they only offer a limited amount of value by providing products to customers and therefore they pass those savings onto their consumers. 

Additionally, one of the things that Wall Street seems incapable of understanding and comprehending is that the worth of a company, the value of a company, cannot always be determined simply by stating that if we lowered that cost our profit would rise, or if we increased that selling price our margin would increase.  There are intangibles in any business model that don't easily translate into numbers, and some of those intangibles involve doing the right thing for your customers, for your employees, and for your collective moral climate.  I do believe that customers take more pleasure and satisfaction out of shopping at a store in which the pricing is fair to them and in which the employees are paid a fair wage. Henry Ford put it best one hundred years ago, when he raised the compensation rates for his employees not only to improve employee productivity, retention, and well-being, but also to put more money into their pockets so that they too could afford to buy the very automobiles that they were assembling.

Corn Ethanol

I eat corn and most people eat some sort of corn product or utilize it in everyday things; for instance, high-fructose syrup which you will find in many sodas is corn based, yogurts, gum, salad dressing, toothpaste, and even perfume all utilize corn.  Corn is used extensively in livestock feed, it is a food staple throughout the world, and the United States is the largest producer and exporter of corn in the world.

With over 850 million people worldwide suffering from undernourishment, it is surprising that corn is now also being utilized as a fuel.  This would imply that corn ethanol is so sufficient, so cost-efficient, so abundant, and in such high supply, that utilizing it as a fuel is the most efficient thing and the most practical use of corn and that this therefore is the right thing for the United States to do.  The facts, however, don't support this thesis.

First, putting aside the obvious fact that corn is a wonderful and efficient food item with a multitude of uses, when one considers corn ethanol as a fuel, you must first rate this ethanol in comparison to the gold standard which is oil.  Is corn as efficient with BTUs as oil?  For instance, using E85, which is a blend of 85% ethanol and 15%, Oak Ridge National Laboratory reported that "…25-30% tank loss in mileage due to the lower energy density of E85."  So clearly, E85 ethanol is not as efficient as oil. 

The next question to ask is how much energy does corn ethanol use in order to produce its fuel energy in comparison to oil.  While experts have weighed in on both sides of the equation, theoildrum.com, states: " …that energy conversion efficiency of gasoline is higher: roughly 1 unit of fossil fuel energy to create 4 units of gasoline compared whereas 1 unit of fossil fuel energy to create 1.3 units of ethanol."

I don't think that there is any doubt that oil is a much more efficient unit of energy.  However, surprisingly, the Model T which was first brought out in 1908 could initially run on gasoline, kerosene, or ethanol.  Henry Ford said "There's enough alcohol in one year's yield of an acre of potatoes to drive the machinery necessary to cultivate the fields for one hundred years,"   and Ford believed that alcohol as a fuel was the fuel of the future, but history to date, has proven him wrong.

This leads to a further question, is it possible that corn ethanol is on the right track as an alternative fuel but it itself is not the most efficient renewal fuel to develop?  That answer would appear to be yes.  Putting aside the usual political shenanigans, the agricultural subsidies for votes, the lobbying, dirty money, cronyism, and other nonsense, there are plenty of other possibilities, limited only by our own imaginations and dreams.  For instance, former Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman, said, "cost competitive, energy responsible cellulosic ethanol made from switchgrass or from forestry waste like sawdust and wood chips… …. contains more net energy and emits significantly fewer greenhouse gases than ethanol made from corn."

Perhaps the great Henry Ford was a visionary and was right about alcohol (ethanol is a type of alcohol), and we just have gone about it the wrong way.

Communes and America

As more and more Americans seem more and more willing to become wards of the State, to want the State to be all and provide all, to sacrifice some of their liberties in order to have more of something else provided to them by the State; it makes one think that this is really a version of a Socialism.  If you were to break down Socialism to its core, or to scale it way, way down, it would be a commune.  A commune is a group of like-minded individuals who have sacrificed their individual identities and possessions in order to reap the benefits of being with a group of people that work together, share together, live together, and prosper together.  It's all for one and one for all.  On the surface, for certain individuals it sounds like nirvana, a truly democratic society in which no one person is above it all, the fruits of the commune's collective efforts are shared together and the joys of true brotherhood are experienced.

Yet with the exception of communes that are faith-based, communal living in America has done quite poorly over the long-term with virtually no real success.  While there may be many reasons for communal failing in America; even reasons of our current State interfering, infiltrating and actively trying to bring down the commune, most communes fail because the people participating in it lose their desire to continue with the lifestyle that they once voluntarily embraced.  Like government programs, communes when they initially start are well-meaning and sound good, but living in them day after day, year after year, takes its toll.  When everything is owned in common and it is the collective work-rate that determines how much food is produce, clothes that are created, housing that is built, medical care that is provided, it is easy to say to oneself, "I'm doing more than the others, I deserve more," or to say, "I'm not here to be anyone's slave, I will work at the rate that I find to be satisfactory, nothing more, nothing less." 

It is human nature that the goals and visions of one's utopia differ than another's.  Because of those differences you will create conflict and because of that conflict the whole edifice is in danger of collapsing upon itself.  Additionally, communes have rules and responsibilities, whereas there is a significant amount of people that believe that life consists of hand-outs that have no strings attached, but in fact, the old proverb "there's no such thing as a free lunch" is not just a proverbial truth, it is truth itself.  Communes without a higher God to answer to, but simply based on people working together for a common purpose will find that that common purpose is hard to lock down and defined.  Additionally, while adults are capable of making decisions and sticking to them and their vision, children are an entirely different prospect.  While some children may be delighted to be living in a communal situation with other children who are like their brothers and sisters in-kind, others will find the need to answer to the siren call of the real world.  As a commune gets older, gets more mature, it must have new blood, new recruits to sustain those that are no longer able to produce or perform at their previous work-rate so that if the children fall away, the commune itself is in danger of following suit.

For those communes that are faith-based, however, while their success and sustainability are not guaranteed, they have required a sacred sacrifice on the part of their adherents and it is that sacrifice and commitment that enables that commune to have a good chance of survival and the tools thereby to thrive.  Communes, who necessitate a "weeding out" process to ascertain your true intentions and to determine your suitability for their mission, for their purpose, are essentially the only communes with sustainability. 

Men with a common purpose that is above their selfish desires, that live for a higher purpose, are the essence of a good commune and Christian thinking as a whole.

Christ as the Lamb and the Lion of God

Most of us are quite familiar with the images and the persona of Christ as the Lamb of God.  Scripture underscores this in several passages such as:

                The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world. (John 1: 29)

                The place of the scripture which he read was this, He was led as a sheep to the slaughter; and like a lamb dumb before his shearer, so opened he not his mouth. (Acts 8:32)

                And cried with a loud voice, saying, Salvation to our God which sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb. (Revelation 7:10)

These above passages signify that Christ sacrificed Himself willingly on the cross as the ultimate sin offering to God and consequently for the redemption of humanity that in their collective ignorance had lost their way.  The amount of humility, discipline, courage, and self-control exhibited by Jesus the Christ to perform this sacred duty for our behalf was incredible and worthy of our utmost respect and love.  For a man, any man, let alone the Christ, to be subjected to painful and bloody beatings of his body, mocked and scourged, and then crucified like a common criminal when Christ, himself, had committed nothing to warrant these actions is excruciating to know.  This is the Chosen One of God, innocent, the Lamb of God, treated with abject contempt.

But fortunately, the story does not end there.  How could it?  Christ sacrificed his physical body and emptied his ego for our behalf to demonstrate that the greatest of us all surrenders Himself to God, and that our Spirit, our Soul, forever triumphs over our physical body that so many of us wrongly place too much attention to.  Still further to the point, Christ then resurrected Himself physically for our benefit to prove to us that it is the Spirit that manifests the body and not the other way around; and it is this bodily resurrection, this reconstitution, that built the foundation of the Christian religion as we know it today. 

The former is of the Christ, as our redeeming Lamb, but what of the Lion?  We read:

                        And one of the elders saith unto me, Weep not: behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, hath prevailed to open the book, and to loose the seven seals thereof. (Revelation 5:5)

The Lion as referenced in this scripture refers to Christ, who is of the tribe of Judah, which is the lineage of King David of the Old Testament.  It is important to understand Christ as the Lion, whose symbolic reference is one that is a King, fearless, majestic, and all mighty.  There is no God but our God, who is second to none, He is All and will ever be All, He is unchanging, He is justice, He is Truth, He is love, He is our King, and His Son is our Lion, who will forever protect us, guard us, redeem us, and when necessary will correct us, for God's justice will not rest forever.

Bullying

With the exception of Montana, every state in the Union has some form of anti-bullying legislation for school-age children as part of their law and all of this has occurred within the last few years.  While press conferences celebrating this legislation are often applauded and praised, I do take exception to all of this unnecessary legislation which while well-meaning is misapplied.

Going through adolescence is a difficult process and within this growth there are bound to be plenty of tests, turns, and trials.  Bullying is often a rite of passage in which some are bullied, some are the bully, and some aren't impacted by bullying at all.  The basic question comes down to whether or not children are mean and nasty to one another.   Well, yes, often many adolescents are.  We may not wish that that is the case but the fact of the matter speaks for itself.  Anti-bullying legislation won't stop that behavior, it will simply be another case of an unnecessary bureaucracy interposing itself on children, with the mistaken vision that this law will allow us to get along and that justice thereby will be served. 

Before I go any further, let me allow you to know a little background of my own life in being bullied.  I was always physically the smallest or nearly the smallest male while going to school, in which some of my contemporaries were 60% larger or even bigger in size than I was.  I would say most of my bullying incidents mainly came about because of my smart-ass mouth but certainly not all of them.  Perhaps I would make a comment in class that would embarrass one of my bigger classmates and he would want to take it out on me later, so I had more than one of these confrontations.  Well, being bullied, being threatened or even hit, by a bigger boy that I could not possibly beat up is not an enviable position to be in.  The best defense in those types of situations is to try to make peace, apologize, humor, cry, or a combination thereof.  In really bad situations I would tell my parents and something would be worked out, in others, I learned to avoid that bully, and quite frankly I don't ever remember becoming good friends with a bully.  Now, the above all has to do with me being clearly outclassed in regards to size and strength, but that wasn't always the case with every bully I came across.  Sometimes, the person bullying me was perhaps only 30% bigger than me and in those cases, given the right circumstances, I would fight back, and I usually after a push by my foe or something to that effect, I got the first real punch in.  In those situations, and probably without exception, fighting back, no matter the end result (and usually that result was a good one for my fighting self), I garnered a lot of respect from my contemporaries, and quite frankly it made me feel good about myself. 

You could say that bullying was never always a negative, it taught me that there are consequences to your own actions in regards to what you say and what you do, and that there are times in which you must be a doormat, but there are also times in which you are called to be courageous.   I remember one embarrassing incident during gym, when a much bigger and mean-spirited boy deliberately splashed hard on a water puddle in which the water got all over the front of my gym shorts, and then had the gumption to turn to a couple girls that were walking our way and say, "he just peed in his pants".   I quickly thought of a lot of possible responses I had, but none of them made any sense, I mean to deny that I peed in my pants would serve to confirm that I actually had, to explain the real situation to the girls would take too long and wouldn't be believed anyway, and ultimately I didn't say a word at all but went about my business, and later I had a good chuckle about it, because although quite mean, the bully had played it well.

Anti-bullying legislation isn't necessary and isn't warranted.  You have a voice, use it; you have a body, use it; you have a mind, use it; you have parents, use them; you have school authorities, you can also use them.  Whatever that you do, don't quit on yourself; I never did and neither should you.