Fight the Power

I just found of copy of this letter that I sent to a judge last year.

Take that, tyrants!!

*******

26 May 2006

The Honorable Deborah Hollifield
6301 Main, Suite 100
The Colony, Texas 75056

Judge Hollifield:

Enclosed is a receipt for an on-line payment of $144 for ticket #K412721.

I did not pay this fine out of any kind of respect for law in this case, or because this law in any way represents justice. I paid for the same reason that I would turn my wallet over to a thug in some dark alley: the threat of force.

There is absolutely no moral justification for applying a law like the ‘Texas Occupant Restraint Laws’ to adults, and it should be stopped immediately. This law treats adults as children. I am not a child, and the state of Texas is not my mommy. Judge Hollifield, it should not be any of the court’s business whether or not I choose to wear a seatbelt. And yet, the busy-bodies in Austin have made it the state’s business, to all our detriment.

Besides the lack of moral backing, this law drives a gross misallocation of limited law enforcement resources. In fact, while the DPS officer was giving me a ticket on a busy rush-hour highway, there was an accident just 100 yards beyond us. He was delayed in fulfilling his real duties of Service and Protection to act as a nanny and revenue collector. I would have enjoyed the irony, if it didn’t involve real hardship for someone else.

Until the legislature fixes this contemptible law, I ask that the courts stop enforcing the ‘Texas Occupant Restraint Laws’ for adults. This law is a petty tyranny that makes a mockery of the Texas judicial system.

Sincerely,

Trey


CC: Representative Brian McCall
Senator Florence Shapiro

Under Our Name

At a minimum, Dr. Paul was very foolish for allowing others to write bad things in his name. Everyone seems to agree with that. So, let’s condemn him, rightly, for his mistake.

Now, let’s take a look at the log in our own eye.

“We the people of the United States…” Here are some of the things that we allow to be done in OUR name that go far beyond expressing impolite thoughts.

• Starving the children of Iraq
• Bombing the people of Iraq
• Supporting the dictator of Pakistan
• Raiding medical clinics in California and stealing sick people’s medicine
• Counterfeiting
• Taxation
• Torture

We vote, we accept the outcomes of elections, we pay our taxes without protest; we add our affirmation that this is a legitimate government. I hear all the time about the difference between the government of the united States and the people of the united States, but look whose name is at the top of the founding document.

An Intellectual Giant at Work

Wow! All this thinking I am doing sure is tiring.

Thinking and thinking. Mulling. Cogitating. Contemplating.

Oh, and the writing is killing me! The composing, the editing, all the production. Clickity-clack.

Why did I start a blog again?

Social Studies

I was listening to talk radio on the way home from work. They were discussing the impending socialization of health care. One man called in and said "Socialized medicine could never last in America. Just wait till someone's kid has to wait a long time for treatment. Everyone will be up in arms..." - something like that.

I don't have high hopes about opposition to socialized medicine when I see so little resistance to socialized education.

For more than three generations now, parents (mine included) have happily handed their most precious children off to the state for 12 years of soul-norming regulation. Six hours a day, five days a week, the state does its best to remake these children into easily managed units, with the lowest common denominator as their model. Of course, it's all with the best of intentions. "Without the state, (other) parents would just let their offspring wallow in ignorance."

The ill effects of socialized education are clear, and have been for a very long time. How can anyone think that the state will do a better job with health care? And yet, it's coming. Like a vampire, we have to invite it into our home. Once it's in - look out!

A Compensation Analyst?

Companies buy labor. My job is to make sure that we don't overpay for labor, and are thus less profitable, or underpay for labor, and not have enough of the right kind of laborers to get done the things we need to get done.

So, I look at lots of surveys of what other companies are paying their folks to do things. I also look at what we are paying our own people to do those same (ideally) things, and I do lots of math to try and make it all make sense.

What makes this even the tiniest bit interesting is that we are pricing people's time.

It isn't steel that is sure it should be priced at X instead of Y. After all, it's buddy was purchased by General Motors at X, and you both had the same GPA in graduate school. Don't I know how critical steel is to the success of this company?

No, I deal with people's pay - their beer money, their retirement dreams, their egos - and that makes it somewhat interesting.

I hope that I don't have to write much more on Compensation, but you never know.