Perfect It Aint

As the title indicates, perfect it aint. I'll rant and rave, maybe even curse once in a while. You are welcome to join me with your comments. At worst I'll just tear out the rest of my hair. At best, I may agree with you. Or maybe I'll just ignore it, because you know, perfect it aint!

Name:
Location: Barboursville, Appalachia, United States

Retired, Financial and Management specialist, lived all over country, but for some reason, decided to retire to West Virginia (that's the new one, not the Richmond one). Please note that all material appearing on this blog is covered under my own personal copyright as creator, except those items appearing in the Comments that do not appear under the screen name of Tanstaafl or are attributed to others by citation. No license is intended or given to copy or redistribute anything appearing in this blog unless written permission is first obtained from the author.

Friday, September 29, 2006

SURVEYS-PERFECT THEY AINT

The local paper, The Herald-Dispatch (aka The Herald-Disgrace), ran a survey last week regarding the upcoming elections. The survey asked whether, six weeks from the election, the respondents intended to vote. The results were absolutely astounding.

About twenty percent of those responding said they were NOT going to vote. Aint that a kick? TWENTY percent of the populace couldn't care less what happens in this city, state or country. And if I were God, I'd go around to each of their homes and burn their voters registration cards right in front of them, haul them off to the public square and publicly flog them.

Lets see, the population of the country is now about 350 million. Pull out those who are too young to vote and that leaves about 250 million potential voters. Should the results be correct, then only 200 million would vote. But only about 166 million voted in the last general election, so it appears that only about 66 percent actually do vote, and that means that 14 percent are unaccounted for in the survey. And that means that the 20 percent is actually 34 percent. Over one third of eligible voters refuse to vote.

Wonder if that 34 percent are the ones who complain the most bitterly when they don't like the way the country is going? Quoting Laugh-In, "You bet your bippy!."

Watching the percent of eligible voters who actually cast a ballot over the past twenty or so years, I've come to the conclusion that probably fifty percent of those who do not vote don't give a rats rear end about anything. And I truly do mean anything. But the other fifty percent dearly love to carp about everything the society or government does. And I truly do mean everything.

Those of us who do bother to vote are voting for 1-1/3 eligible voters, so I myself look very closely at the candidates and issues. It's a hell of a responsibility those non-voters put upon all us who do vote.

And you cannot convince these people that it is in their best interest to vote. Apathy reigns supreme for them. Until the world does something they don't like or something that affects their pocketbook occurs. Then that vocal fifty percent of 34 percent goes bananas. And their rapid fire carping gets the sttention of the politicians and the politicians make rapid fire decisions that are wrong, inept and downright stupid. And then we, the actual voters, are forced to make decisions that sometimes are good, sometimes bad, and at other times, downright disastrous.

Polls, inherently, are to be looked upon with suspicion, as only those with a vested interest will respond. Now what in the hell does that mean, you ask. It simply means that everyone who responded to that survey has a computer, since it was an online poll. And who has computers? The young, the more affluent, some retirees, and others who like to look at what other people are doing and saying. But, more to the point, those without access to a computer could not respond.

And that means the vote was skewed. And people are more apt to respond yes than no in any poll, in any event. So it really tells me that, although I cannot put a number to it, many more than twenty percent ARE NOT GOING TO VOTE THIS YEAR!! Based on previous mid-term elections, we'll be lucky to turn out fifty percent of the eligible voters.

A majority of fifty percent of course, works out to be about 25.1 percent. Of eligible voters, not of the population, only of the eligible voters--who are those who bothered to register (which works out to less than eighty percent of potentially eligible voters on the basis of age.) So now lets work some numbers.

If we have a turnout of fifty percent of eligible voters, we have a turnout of 40 percent of potentially eligible voters and a winning percentage of votes turns out to be 20.1 percent of potentially eligible voters. If we had a presidential election based on these numbers, a vote of 50,250,000 votes would elect a president. Out of a total population of 350 million. What a travesty. That means that 14.3 percent of the population would elect a president, and by extension, senator, congressman.

I'm now to the point of saying that voting should no longer be a priviledge (notice I didn't say right), but a requirement. Say anyone over the age of twenty-one is required to vote, penalty for not voting being a matter of law and not subject to reduction by judicial authority. I know, eighteen year old are eligible to vote. They don't as a rule, so put it back to twenty-one where it should be. After all, they can't drink legally until twenty-one, so why give them the vote? And they are certainly too young to get married at eighteen. And they are just barely able to drive safely at eighteen. But I digress...

I do not expect anyone to agree with me regarding these issues, but being right is more important to me than having people agree with me. So there.

Monday, September 25, 2006

Hold On, There'll Be More, Dang It

Sometime within the next week or two, I'll have a couple more for you to read. Better keep the ballbat handy. You may want to use it on me after you read these ones!

One is concerned with right/wrong/and do I give a rats a--? Another concerns itself with Constitutional questions (Oh no, not again?) And another on the current survey the local paper is running regarding the coming election.

4warned is 4armed (just like Popeye)[who, by the way, is getting damned mad about the high price of OYL]

Friday, September 01, 2006

Crime and Punishment?

Well here we go again.

I've just finished reading some blogs regarding drug dealers and prisons. Whew! What a misunderstanding people have. They actually seem to think that when someone in sent to prison they are there so that they may be taught how to become nice, contibuting members of our society.

BUZZZZTTT!!!! Wrong answer!!!

Lets look at the semantics of the matter. A prison is a penitentiary (n. from the Latin poena, punishment) and , as such, is meant to punish, not rehabilitate. To be in the penal system, a crime has been committed for which the penal code demands punishment. While it may well be a public good that those denizens of our penal institutions be rehabilitated, the penitentiary is not the place to do so.

For people to be rehabilitated for their antisocial proclivities, they should be placed in the proper facilities, such as halfway houses, work release, home confinement or other such place. Psychologists and social workers must be a part of such rehabilitative efforts, or the efforts will come to naught. Rehabilitation can be a very long process and society may not be able to pay for such a long, drawn-out process.

But prison is for punishment, and punishment only. Anyone who thinks they can do rehabilitation in a prison setting is sadly mistaken. Take the license plate machinery out of the prisons, take away the computers and the televisions. Put the license plate machinery in a closed commercial type setting and have the halfway house or work release clientele perform useful work for which they are adequately compoensated. Do not allow access to computers or televisions to prisoners. Allow access only for specific programming in other settings (in other words, no crime shows, no gangster music, no blatant sex shows.)

Prisoners should work in the prison setting. Jobs such as agricultural work, highway maintenance, building maintenance, cooking, cleaning and so on. Under adequate supervision of paid prison personnel. Eliminate any 'Trusty' situations (remember the 'Trusty' earned his punishment also.)

I don't want to seem excessively harsh, but I think society had better get its head out of where it is and screw it back on staight. We've tried rehabilitation for two hundred years and it ain't worked, folks. I don't think we need to go back to the Angola type prisons but we certainly need to get back to the basic use of a prison, and that is punishment. I've worked hard all my life and kept out of trouble, like most of you. While it was never uppermost in my mind, I always wanted to avoid going to jail because that is where the worst dregs of society end up. Not only that, I always knew that prison was a place where you were punished. (Did your parent ever tell you that they were going to have the Sheriff come get you and haul you off to jail if you didn't straighten up and fly right? Be honest, now!)

As Earl would say, "Wake up, America!"