Something To Think About Archive

Lyricist Billy Rose advised us to “Never invest in anything that eats or needs repairing.”

Novelist and editor E.W. Howe once noted that “The real tragedy of life is not being limited to one talent, but in failing to use that one talent.”

Seneca said: “If you would make a man happy, do not add to his possessions but subtract from the sum of his desires.”

Whether or not you follow (or even care about) the PGA-LIV Golf split and proposed merger, which is under scrutiny by Congress and the DOJ, golf coach Butch Harmon makes a great point. “And any time you get the government involved, they can screw up anything; says Harmon. And now they’re going to tell golf how to be run. … come on. Please take care of the budget; don’t worry about ***** golf.” This is reminiscent of John Kerry’s Senate hearings years ago on why a Patriots game was blacked out in Boston. Don’t they have something better to do in Washington?

“The secret between winning and losing,” according to Walt Disney “is frequently not quitting.”

A Zen Proverb tells us to “Sit, walk, or run, but don’t wobble.”

It’s been said that “Thrift is a wonderful virtue – especially in your ancestors.”

The Biden Administration gets in its own way in its push for renewables, especially battery powered cars, when it revokes permits for the mining of the very minerals required to build those same batteries as it recently did in Minnesota forcing us to rely even more on foreign production by increasingly unfriendly governments.

Calvin Coolidge believed that “Industry, thrift and self-control are not sought because they create wealth, but because they create character.”

Recent rulings by the Supreme Court that essentially upheld States Rights in one ruling and re-established the Constitutionally mandated Congressional “Power of the Purse” in another, upset Progressives and had them renewing calls to reshape the Supreme Court. Fortunately, President Biden reaffirmed his institutionalist stance that any calls for term limits or an increase in the number of Justices could further politicize the Court. He’s right.

Famed aviator and test pilot Chuck Yaeger claimed that “Arrogant pilot will get ya killed; confident ones make history.”

The late Alan Arkin once observed that “In the final analysis, it’s all improvisation. We’re all tap dancing on a rubber raft.”

Writer Cormac McCarthy believed that “Your life is made out of the days it’s made out of. Nothin’ else.”

Gandhi said: “Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and why you do are in harmony.”

Plato said: “Wise men speak because they have something to say; fools because they have to say something.”

Here’s what’s wrong with government subsidies to create jobs: New York state built Tesla a $1 billion factory that was supposed to turn out enough solar-panel shingles to cover 1,000 roofs a week. Years later they now average a whopping 21 installations a week. Remember Solyndra, Obama’s $500 million investment in solar panels? Solyndra went bust in less than a year. The problem with government subsidies, especially when tied to ESG? They don’t work and you and I pay for them. Forever.

“Real leaders,” according to author John Seaman Garns, “are ordinary people with extraordinary determination.”

Novelist Carson McCullers claimed that “There are those who know and those who don’t. And for every ten thousand who don’t know there’s one who knows.”

Disraeli said: “There is no education like adversity.”

Kudos to the Tuolumne County Board of Supervisors for providing Sheriff Bill Pooley the tools he needed, in the form of new pay raises and signing bonuses, to staff back up the Sheriff’s Department. Competition for tax dollars is fierce, but public safety is at the top of the list of things that government must provide and the increased year-to-date hirings for both Jail and Patrol is long overdue and allows Sheriff Pooley and his department to be more effective in performing the already difficult and dangerous duties.