We paid triple rates for natural gas last winter. And we’re paying through the nose for electricity while listening to reports of brownouts in California and how that state’s problems are going to effect the rest of the country. All this, as we ready our air conditioners for another hot summer. We’re also getting ready for about $3.00 per gallon at the gas pumps while refineries may not even be able to deliver fuel with all the restriction and additives the EPA requires. I’ve already given up eating out, movies, and now I’m thinking about staying home for the summer. Spending summer vacation fixing up the old house so I don’t have to hire someone else to paint, mow or make repairs.

Since last March I’ve been watching the stock market fall, losing about half of my IRA and 401-k retirement investment. Now, I’m waiting six months for the Fed to decide whether there’s a recession and hearing about companies laying off thousands. Motorola just laid off 1,200 in my area and is moving that plant to Mexico. I’m loaded with confidence our government will do something like start another Cold War, franchise weapons of mass destruction or sell arms to Chiang Kai Chek’s old hideaway in order to give our biggest remaining industry a boost.

After killing our Christmas spirit with two months of chads, recounts, court trivia, and arguments over whether we’re a democracy or a republic, I’m so full of confidence that I sent copies of the Constitution and Bill of Rights (prohibitions against government) in holiday gift wrapping to all the family. Didn’t even bother shopping so I could watch the next breaking news report of each and every breath taking final decision.

After hearing about how our boys sunk a fishing boat off Hawaii while showing visitors how a nuclear sub could surface in an emergency, adding to the ski-lifts we’ve knocked down, embassies we’ve mistakenly blown up, civilian airliners destroyed and bridges with school buses bombed—I’m just filled with confidence in our boys overseas keeping the peace. I’m just so glad we gave them all those video games to play with so they could learn how to push buttons while watching the enemy on some sort of radar or video display.

Making heroes of a spy crew that was supposed to ditch the plane after hammering all the electronics to pieces rather than turn it over to the spied upon, did nothing but further my confidence. And everyone knows a turbo prop plane with 5,000 hp engines and a cruising speed of more than 400 mph could never, in a fit of air rage, swing into a jet fighter hanging under its wing tip, especially without flipping the autopilot toggle switch.

Those Chinese have always been a bunch of arrogant and aloof snobs anyway. You could tell when, as far back as the Fifties and Sixties, they were flooding our technical engineering schools like MIT and IIT while our kids were studying something sensible and noble like how to sue for a living or become political fund raisers. Those inscrutably backward Orientals were trying to get up to speed in an industrial world.

With great hope in our new President, I’m anxiously awaiting his restoration of some of the constitutional rights lost under Clinton and the war on drugs. So far, I haven’t noticed much, but I just heard that the Supreme Court ruled you can be arrested and handcuffed for not wearing seat-belts, and it’s not a violation of your Fourth Amendment rights. We tend to think of the Supremes without realizing that they’re part of the same corrupt government, don’t we?

Let’s see, what was it our founding fathers said? Wasn’t it that the federal government’s role should be minimal with the primary job of providing for the common defense and justice? With something in there about “coinage.” All else should be left to the states and churches.

By the way, have you ever thought about what might happen to the economy if the government actually started winning the war on drugs? If illegal drug sales fell off dramatically? I don’t think the organized crime business invests much in improving or researching the product or its distribution. Procurement maybe, but where do you suppose they put all their profits?

Six years ago, a friend of mine returned from an annual meeting in Las Vegas to tell me one day on the golf course: "Ed, did you know that the cocaine business is worth $500 billion a year?" Is Alan Greenspeak taking this into account?