Weekly Posting of the Conservative Cow Doctor

 

The Parachute

 When you were a kid did you make the little parachute out of a plastic army-man tied to
the four corners of a red handkerchief with kitchen string? It works amazingly well. I
would spend hours experimenting with different folding patterns and then heave the thing
high in the air and watch it gently float to the ground. After several hundred launches I
thought to myself, “If I tied myself to a bed sheet I could jump off the barn roof and float
to the ground just like the plastic army-man, but I probably should test my idea first.”

It was a quiet summer afternoon as I gathered the supplies for my magnificent parachute.
Since the linen closet was full of sheets I figured Mom wouldn’t miss just one so I
grabbed a yellow one and sprinted out behind the barn. Kitchen string would be too
weak so using my pocket knife I slashed through the haystack and collected enough
baling-twine for the harness. (I don’t know how city kids survive without pocket knives
and baling-twine.)

Finding the proper weight to represent me was more challenging than I anticipated.
Eventually, down in the creek I located a fifty pound boulder with enough cracks to
secure a homemade bailing-twine parachute harness so I lugged it out behind the barn
with the rest of my supplies.

The manufacturing portion of my experiment progressed much faster than did the
gathering of the raw materials. Within a dangerously short period of time my apparatus
was ready for a test flight. I studied the barn; it was about thirty feet to its apex and I had
no way to safely get up there. (Coming down would be no problem as I had my yellow
parachute.) “How am I going to test this?” I thought to myself.

That is when I spotted the apple tree growing against the old shop. I could simply climb
the tree, crawl to the edge of the roof and give the rock a shove. It was only about a
twenty foot drop but it would simulate a drop from the barn.

A skinny kid climbing an apple tree while cradling a fifty pound boulder wrapped in a
bed sheet is not as simple as it sounds. Numerous premature launches from the lower
branches were discouraging but I kept trying. Sweating and red faced, I finally made it
up the tree to the roof and scooted along the ridgeline to the edge. I eagerly untangled the
bailing-twine and carefully laid out my yellow parachute. I paused for a moment and
looked to the sky and imagined how Orville and Wilbur felt as they readied the Wright
Flyer for her maiden voyage. I gave the boulder a shove and it…plunged straight to the
ground like a fifty pound boulder tied to a yellow bed sheet with bailing-twine.

I was disappointed, but I was alive. You see there are no successes or failures when you
are a ten year-old aviator; there are only results. Learn from them. Yes, I wasted one
entire afternoon, exhausted myself and tore some noticeable holes in what I later
discovered were my mother’s favorite sheets. At least it didn’t cost the taxpayers $895 to
find the answer to a stupid question. This brings me to my point: Have you heard about
the $895 dollar experiment (www.roaduserstudy.com) so the government can find yetanother
way to pry money out of your wallet? (This is like Hitler paying Jews $895 dollars to test
shower-head gas valves.)

Just like always, you citizens are just not paying enough tax money for politicians to give
you free services so they can be re-elected. Since the high cost of fuel is forcing people
to select fuel-efficient vehicles and car pool, the amount of fuel tax revenue to the
government has been plunging. Currently the federal government pockets 18.74 cents
and Montana 27 cents tax from every gallon of gasoline you buy. (The oil company who
drills, refines, and then delivers the fuel to the pump nets about 9 cents of every gallon,
and yet they are portrayed as the greedy villain.)

Politicians are advocating attaching GPS computers to your car so they can track and tax
the actual miles driven. Weekly, monthly, or annually (whatever is deemed best for the
government) you will receive a tax bill for every mile. Residents of sparsely populated
states will suffer most but city folk served by mass transit won’t feel a thing, so this tax
change will easily pass.

Also, since this tax will be entirely computer based it will be possible for bureaucrats to
adjust tax policy to whatever fits their paradigm of societal fairness. Expect companies
like Ford, who refused to accept TARP bailout funds and therefore government control,
to be assessed higher taxes under the guise they are less green than GM or Chrysler.

Government continues to grow. Only the taxpayer is expected to get by with less.
iny new cars to the marketplace.
Americans, always wanting what is best, flocked past the mini-cars to the safe and
reliable SUVs. These big bad boys became the profit-drivers for the Big-Three so they
sold what the consumer wanted and paid the fine. The fossil evidence for that is
screaming down the interstate talking on a cell phone.

Unhappy with consumers driving SUVs, government officials choked off domestic oil
exploration with environmental regulation and drove the price of crude oil over $120 a
barrel. (European socialists had done this earlier through fuel taxes, but Americans tend
to revolt at punitive levels of taxation.) Gasoline prices shot above $5 dollars per gallon;
the evidence in on your gas receipt.

Undaunted, drivers of SUVs and pickups turned to fuel-efficient diesel engines. The
Powerstroke, Duramax and Cummins engines utilized a fuel that was cheaper at the pump
and yet delivered the power to carry an American payload in a manly fashion. Regulators
responded with new eco-friendly ultra-low sulfur requirements forcing yet another
retooling of both auto assembly lines and refineries. No longer cheaper, ultra-low sulfur
diesel sold at a premium to gasoline. That evidence is also listed on the pump.

Most recently the pyramid scheme of government-owned Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
led to a mortgage collapse and secondarily restricted money supplies; auto sales plunged.
Two of the Big Three hopelessly accepted TARP bailout money and were bankrupt in six
months. Suddenly, the federal government controlled two of the largest auto companies
in the world. The fossil record for that became apparent on July 9th, 2009 when
government-controlled GM announced they will void their contract to purchase platinum
and palladium for catalytic converters from the only US supplier, Stillwater Mining
Company of Columbus Montana. Now GM will only purchase these minerals from
Russia and South Africa, and they will use your tax dollars (or debt against your
grandchildren) to buy it.

Go ahead, slam your hood in disgust. The automobile fossil record clearly shows free-
market capitalism is extinct. Montana stands to lose yet another natural resource industry
and several hundred high-paying jobs. Isn’t socialism great? Is this why President Ford
warned “government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take
from you everything you have”?

 
 
 
 
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