A chuckle with a serious note...

There's an old sea story in the Navy about a ship's Captain who inspected His sailors, and afterward told the Chief Boson that his men smelled bad.

The Captain suggested perhaps it would help if the sailors would change underwear occasionally.

The Chief responded, "Aye, aye sir, I'll see to it immediately!

The Chief went straight to the sailors berth deck and announced, "The Captain thinks you guys smell bad and wants you to change your underwear. Pittman, you change with Jones, McCarthy, you change with Kwiatkowski, and Brown you change with Schultz. Now get to it!!"

THE MORAL: Someone may be promising "Change," but don't count on things smelling any better!


A large corporation that I used to do a lot of business with has an unwritten rule of management that goes "When you take on a new assignment you must change something."
If you don't change something you will not get credit for any successes. Why? Because it was your predecessor that put the organization in place for you. On the other hand, if something goes poorly it must be your fault because it was fine before you managed it! However, if you do make a change then any successes can be claimed as yours due to the change you made. If something fails, well at least you tried.
I personally find this amusing in a corporate setting but quite unsettling in the larger view of government and society. I think we all would agree that things could be better in the US health care system and being good to the environment is never a bad thing. But.... and this is a big one, changing these things without looking at all views is both dangerous and irresponsible. We would not be affecting one group, department, division, or company. We would ruin an entire country. And once people become reliant upon the government for something it is very hard and very expensive to break that reliance.

I currently am planning on spending Wednesday evening August 26th trying to get my elected official to the house of representatives to notice my opinions - please don't mortgage my great-grandchildren's future on another set of government boondoggles. Let's find more cautious ways of moving forward lest we lose so much of what 10 or more generations have worked to build up.