“Do I need it?”

“Will I use it?”

“Can I afford it?”

That is how I have managed my life’s finances.

There are obviously times during one’s life when we buy things that we don’t really need but those are what makes life fun. These are the frivolous items that we buy or the trips that we take simply for pleasure.

However, before I spend the money I always ask myself, “Can I afford it?”

I answer that question honestly every time and often forego the pleasure out of a sense of fiscal responsibility.

In my previous post, “Black Plastic”, I questioned the necessity of the plastic sheet at construction sites.

To date, one person has agreed with me and one has misunderstood my article.

I did not blame Saudi Arabia for our misguided use of polyethylene.

If readers go back to the beginning of my articles they will find that my entire purpose in writing these articles is to question actions based on emotion rather than reason.

I assume the intended purpose of the plastic is to protect the environment. However, it does not and its use amounts to “Fiscal Irresponsibility”.

In short, we don’t need it and we can’t afford it.

The US has been in a continuously increasing trade deficit and purchasing polyethylene from a foreign country worsens the situation.

Polyethylene is a petroleum-based product. It is my opinion that crude oil, which we are told is a limited resource, is being diverted to the production of a product that we don’t need and can’t afford.

During my recent travels I drove along a highway in western Florida where some road construction was underway in the median strip.

It was a four-lane Interstate highway with the wide median strip the level of which was below the center of the highway lanes.

During the last decade it seems that no one is permitted  to dig in their yard or anywhere else without driving some stakes into the ground and attaching sheets of black plastic. I am not certain who established this requirement but it appears that the purpose is to prevent rocks and water from going somewhere where they are not supposed to go.

It doesn’t matter that this thin plastic barrier permits water to flow under it or stones to roll through it and knock it down. What puzzles me is that the plastic must be installed higher than the level at which the work is being done.

I have yet to see stones or water to run uphill but nevertheless, that is where the plastic must be.

As though that wasn’t sufficient, hay bales seem now to be required along with the plastic sheet.

Getting back to my Florida trip, I saw miles and miles of black plastic along that particular stretch of highway. In some places it went through the woods and completely around the off ramps as far as 200 feet away from the actual digging site.

What I found particularly bizarre is that this construction area had a double row of black plastic separated by about 18 inches.

This made the cost of the pointless black plastic installation double what a single wall would have been.

At that point I was determined to find out what company has convinced highway departments that this nonsense was necessary to protect the environment.

What I found: Saudi Basic Industries Corporation (SABIC) is one of the world’s 10 largest petrochemical manufacturers. The company is among the world’s market leaders in the production of polyethylene.

So, more US dollars flow out of the country not just for oil but for useless plastic that further fills our landfills and will probably still be intact long after the spent radioactive waste from our nuclear power plants has cooled down.

To quote Harry Golden’s book title: “Only In America”.

Which, by the way, is a good read along with his “For Two Cents Plain”

For a number of years I have been going to the same resort in Jamaica. Quite a few years ago I met the man who picks up trash and plastic cups from the beach, arranges the beach lounges and chairs for the next day and then rakes the beach.

He’s a Rastafarian as is his father and was his grandfather. They eat vegetables and some fish but not meat. They don’t believe in violence or war. They don’t drink alcohol or smoke cigarettes but they do smoke marijuana. (A topic that I have planned to discuss in a future post).

He’s an interesting old guy who leaves the resort at the end of the day and walks to his home in the mountains.

He has been doing this for a long time. He told me that he had to cut off his ‘dreads’ that had reached to his knees in order to get this job.

I returned home yesterday bringing with me an interesting topic.

While sitting on the beach near the end of the day Pablito noticed that I started to pick up a plastic cup not too far from my lounge.

“No mon, leave it. I pick it up.”
I told him that it wasn’t mine and that I wouldn’t leave a cup on the beach.

“I know,” he said. ” Inside you Rasta too. But if everyone was like you who didn’t leave trash on the beach, I would have no job and my family would go hungry.”

Slobs do, after all, have a place in ‘the order of the universe”.

                                                     John W. Malenda

Friends and loyal readers, I will be “off-line” for a couple of weeks but don’t despair, I will return!

With that, I expect, most will be spent by us to buy products from China.

Perhaps the Columbian drug dealers would like to get in on this deal also. I’m certain that they have money to loan. 

…and you don’t think we need a National ID Card?

Package that with a few bags of fertilizer and a can of home heating oil and terrorists do not need to smuggle in rockets or nuclear material  in suitcases at airports.

 Let’s not be so naive. Let’s not swap a little inconvenience for our lives.

                                                 John W. Malenda

Since I posted the previous article I have talked with a number of people and everyone feels that it would restrict their freedom.

The second concern is if there were such a card could someone be arrested for not carrying it?

First, it would be an identification card not a government ‘tracking device”. The US government already has such a device. It is your credit or debit card.

If the government wanted to, they would know how much money you spend with respect to your income, what you buy and where and when. They could follow your activities in great detail at present if they wanted to.

They know the make, model and year of your automobile and knowing how much gas you purchase, they can know how far you drive in a year and where you have purchased gas therefore where you have been.

When I go to vote in Connecticut, I must present my driver’s license or I don’t get to vote. It’s as simple as that. The police don’t haul me away to prison.

We carry all sorts of “cards” today already. You have your driver’s license, your Social Security Card, your medical insurance or Medicare card, your library card and so on.
If you do not present that card you are not arrested, you simply do not receive some service appropriate to that card.

Now to the consequences as a result of NOT having this card.

Saudi terrorists would have been unable to obtain drivers licenses which they were able to use to receive flight training leading to pilot certificates in the US.

They would have been unable to board those large commercial aircraft.

The World Trade Towers would still be standing. Those lives would not have been lost. The US would not have gone into Afganistan. The US would not be fighting a war in Iraq.
Billions of dollars would be instead taking care of problems at home. Thousands of American servicemen would be alive today and more thousands would not be crippled.

A National Identity Card would have prevented all this.

What lies in store for us without this card?

It’s your decision.

I have heard discussions that it will take away our privacy and our freedom. That it is the final step toward 666, the Mark of the Beast.

Consider where we are today. You must use your Social Security Number every time you are involved in some major financial transaction. Your Social Security Number is required for Medicare.

Try to cash a check without showing your Driver’s License Number.

Every member of the Armed Forces has a Number.

Our Passports have their number also that you must use on forms entering or leaving the country.

We already have a number for almost everything now, why not a uniform identification system that proves our entitlement to benefits, our privilege to drive, to make financial transactions and our right to vote.

It is logical to have one identification number rather than a half dozen.

That card would prove that we are United States Citizens and not someone who had crossed our borders illegally for whatever purpose that they might hope to achieve.

Why not?