Has Obama learned anything during his first year?

Barack Obama was a relatively young man when he became president. He’s bright, but his experience was limited to going to school, community organizing and public office. Surely he has met people and seen things in the past year that are completely inconsistent with the profiles and impressions he formed long ago.
• Obama must be blown away at how bright, hard working and caring business people truly are - especially small business owners. He must be equally disappointed at how self-centered and unenlightened government officials can be.
• Has he seen enough to understand that America, warts and all, is a truly exceptional nation, and that no apologies are needed?
• Does he yet comprehend that cutting taxes would have stimulated the economy, and that massive government spending has sent us into a long-term funk?
• Does he now accept that all the “excessive” corporate profits and CEO wages added together wouldn’t be a drop in the bucket of government waste and corruption?
• Can he now see that the real substance of America lies between the Northeast and California?
• Has he seen the destructiveness of political correctness and the divisiveness of partisanship?
• Does he yet realize how shallow it is to blame Bush for everything?
• Has it sunk in that attempts to share wealth simply spread misery?
Yes, the past year should have been an eye opener for Obama. Is there any hope that he can change?

Book #3 progress

Thought I’d share the progress on getting my third novel, Orange Terrace, released. Might be interesting to anyone wanting to get published.
• Writing – done 4 years ago. That’s the easy part.
• Editing – probably rewritten every word and line several times over the past 4 years.
• Feedback – 15 friends or so have provided feedback, which directs much of the editing. About ready to close this step and do one more self-edit.
• Cover – Susan Welsh is working on some revisions and should be done any day. Very exciting. Cover design is a work of art in itself.
• Publishers – sent queries in October. Two dear johns and three open to date. May be go with Indigo Publishing again. AuthorHouse (print-on-demand) is the fallback.
• Blurbs for back cover – 5 people in mind; two received to date. Hope to have quirky lines by Mayor and MCCG CEO.
• Website – Larry Najera ready to rework www.rickmaier.com. Need new photo.
• Marketing – need to work on postcard, freebie list, book signings, appearances, and promotion via the web.
Summary – May be January-February before book gets published, March-April before it’s out. Not in a big hurry because book market is in a slump. Spring is good timing for summer reading and positioning for fall (2010) selling season.
I'm halfway up the mountain.

Ginkgo is one sexy tree

The walk from my car to office at Wesleyan College every day is like a walk in the park… not the work so much as the view of the wonderful old buildings and landscape.
And in the next few days we will be treated to a particularly special annual event - the fall of the Ginkgo leaves.
All at once the leaves will turn brilliant yellow; then, all at once, they will fall to the ground. People will be staring up and taking pictures of the trees. Some folks lie on the ground and make “angels” in the golden blanket of leaves.
What makes the fall show even more special is knowing that ginkgo biloba are the oldest trees on earth, dating back 250 million years to the time of dinosaurs. The living fossil was once thought extinct, but found in China hundreds of years ago and replanted around the world. The leaves have a unique fan shape, and the leaf extract is said to have memory-enhancing and other medicinal powers. Some trees in Asia are said to be 2,500 years old.
Here’s the sexy part. The boy trees have cones and the girls have seeds. In early fall you can smell the female tree from fifty yards away when the seeds fall to the ground and give off a really foul odor as they decay. The smell is so bad that people end up cutting down the female trees. It can take twenty to fifty years for the trees to mature, so you can’t tell the boys from the girls when you plant them.
There are one female and two male ginkgo trees at Wesleyan, and you can find others scattered around Macon. If I had a few more decades to live, I’d plant a grove.

Conservation movement hijacked

I’ve been conserving all my life. I consume as little energy as possible, use things up, recycle and never litter. I love nature and support the great outdoors. Most people I know act the same way.
You’d think conservation would be the foundation of the ‘sustainability’ movement, but hijackers came aboard and forced a wacky left turn: consumers are wasteful drones of the evil business empire; Americans are most responsible for damaging the Earth; big government programs are the solution. Then the council of Hollywood bishops ordained Internet inventor and climatology expert, Al Gore, as their leader.
Like the ‘peace’ movement of the 1970s, the ‘sustainability’ and 'climate change' tags have that oxymoronic deceptiveness about them. They even hijacked green – the color of Christmas, money and envy - so the masses could follow more easily.
If man is having a negative impact on the planet, it can’t compare to the forces of sunspots, volcanoes and forest fires. Man’s biggest impact stems from an exploding worldwide population, but you don’t hear environmentalists say much about controlling births or accelerating deaths.
In nature, when a population consumes its resources, it dies or invades another territory. But environmental extremists pick and choose their laws of nature, and survival of the fittest isn’t a rule they like. They blame America for ravaging natural resources and labor overseas, but ignore that we aid the needy and maintain world order.
Instead of using up the earth’s ready supply of fossil fuels, the movement leaders want to force ‘renewable’ sources on us, decades before their time. If we want to tax and spend our way to sustaining Mother Earth, we should build nuclear plants and accelerate the exploration of space.
Maybe ‘conservation’ just sounds too similar to ‘conservative’.

Where’s the accountability?

Why are Barney Frank (D-Rep MA) and Chris Dodd (D-Sen CN) still in office? Not only are they economic idiots, they’re corrupt. If anyone is responsible for the meltdown in the financial markets we suffered last year, it’s these two clowns. But they are still officiating and the press still gives them airtime.
Oh that’s right, they’re liberals. Yes, they received huge contributions from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Barney’s boyfriend was a Fannie executive and Dodd got a VIP loan. But they meant well.
There must be a lot of pork pouring into their two states, though both may lose reelection in 2010.
Another group that needs to man-up are moderates like Warren Buffet and Colin Powell who helped put Obama in office. They owe us an equal effort to try to unwind this disaster.
And then there’s big media, giving any lib a pass (Alan Grayson, D-Rep FL) and letting the Dems continue to blame Bush for everything.
Three years of Democratic control of Congress and a year of Obama in the White House has produced the biggest economic disaster since the 1930s. Time for heads to roll.

Earl Benson, Macon job creator

Pictured: Sandra and Earl Benson at Oct '09 reunion

Back in the 1970’s, Earl Benson decided to quit his bread truck route and open an office equipment company. Today a thousand people in Macon have good paying jobs, thanks to Earl’s initiative, hard work and tenacity.
Earl sold his highly successful copier company, Acme Business Products, to IKON Office Solutions in 1983. He continued on with IKON, expanding his responsibilities and growing jobs in Macon with corporate-level resources, until retiring just a few years ago. IKON later sold the leasing operation (Bass Rd) to GE Capital, and the sales & service operation (Preston Ct) and back office center (Arkwright Rd) to Ricoh.
On October 24th, Acme held a reunion. Seeing everyone again made me realize how great the good ol’ days in the 1980s and 1990s really were – genuine change and exciting opportunities.
You don’t hear much about Earl, mostly because he shuns the spotlight. But he’s done more for this community than people will ever know.
I moved to Macon in 1984 to work for Earl, and owe him a great deal.
Thanks, EB.

Nanny villages go kaput

When you’re under stress, go back to basics. And a basic way to consider public policy is to think of our country as a village.
Say that you’re the leader of a village of 100 people. The villagers hunt, farm, care for their families, build huts and trade goods. Everyone agrees to chip in and hire a few peace officers and teachers, plus they gladly give to the church to help take care of the less fortunate. The village prospers.
If the US were a village of 100, we’d have 5 teachers, 5 police officers, 10 attorneys, 5 social workers doing the work the church once did, 5 assistants to the leader, 5 vagrants, 5 guys scamming the system and 10 bureaucrats keeping tabs on the other public workers. We’d be in big time debt to the village next door, the one with the wisdom and discipline to maintain about a seven to one private-to-public ratio.
Soon, the 50 villagers who carry the load will slow down; some will move to a better village. The once prosperous village soon collapses.
The private economy in the US has done so well that it could sustain most of the increase we’ve seen in public works over the past 80 years. But Obama and his statist friends have stomped on the accelerator so hard that the engine can’t take any more.
Don’t like the village analogy? Just look at history. Countries with big central governments always fail. Low-tax, low-regulation countries thrive. But even successful nations run the risk of thinking that money grows on trees, get apathetic and slowly fade.