Here Lies Personal Responsibilty

Jane Park, 21, of the UK, had planned to sue lottery organizers claiming her life was ruined after she won a million pounds in the EuroMillions when she was only 17.
Her claim was that someone that young could not handle the money and the lottery should increase the minimum age to 18.
She wasted her fortunate on cars clothes and plastic surgery. Plastic surgery, you don't say.

Park has since dropped her suit and said it was her plan all along. She says if she had merely suggested the age increase no one would have listened, but her lawsuit gained attention, which could initiate the change and perhaps save young people in the future from making the same mistakes. And presumably, blaming those mistakes on someone else.

Another Hit To Personal Responsibility

The New England Patriots' balls were deflated in the AFC Championship game. It is almost certain that this was due to purposeful actions by members of organization. And it's hard to envision any scenario in which someone would do something like that without at the very least, being sure Tom Brady would want it that way.

The problem here with Roger Goodell is that he tried to make a statement. Instead of enforcing the penalties on the books for such an offense, he went way beyond what was collectively bargained (perhaps to dispel criticism that he is too hard on black players, perhaps because of negative publicity when he went with the defined punishment for Ray Rice) and a judge ruled he didn't have the authority to do so.

Yet somehow, Tom Brady is escaping this scot-free even though any sane person has to believe he at least "generally aware" of the plot to deflate the balls, and likely more involved in that.

Which once again reinforces the preferred attitude when doing something wrong: deny it, cover it up and when you get caught, blame the person who caught you for being overzealous. Worked for Bill Clinton.

You Can't Fix Stupid

A great op-ed on CNBC.com expertly points out the major problem with Obamacare: the poor, downtrodden section of society that we are trying to help, is unwilling or unable to help itself. Of the supposed 40 million uninsured, some estimates say only 400,000 have even signed up for Obamacare.
My major issue with this country right now is the lack of personal responsibility. We continue to make rules and laws to diminish the responsibility each individual has over his/her own life. But we're like a mother babying her children, eventually everyone needs to stand on his own and do for himself.
There is a certain segment of society that it too stupid or too irresponsible to make the right decision for himself and his family. We cannot help these people by giving them less responsibility, we can only help them by giving them more.
We have created an atmosphere where people can never work, and get food, housing, health insurance, cell phones (CELL PHONES!!!!) and extra spending money all from the government.
It seems like a lousy life to you and I, but to a lot of people it's better than going to McDonald's and busting your ass everyday for 8 hours and earning less money.
And until we get those people back to work and off the dole we will jump keep giving more and more to more people with no hope for people to every provide from themselves.

It's Not Free Stuff, It's Stealing

A problem with the backup system that controls the payments for EBT cards forced the entire system to crash over the weekend. That meant in 17 states people could not use their food stamp debit cards to buy food.
In most stores, they simply declined to accept EBT cards while the system was not functioning. In two Wal-Marts in Louisiana, store management (apparently with the approval of Wal-Mart corporate) continued to accept EBT cards as payment, even though the system was unable to debit users' accounts.
When word of this got around, people flocked to the stores and filled their carts up with anything they could find knowing the stuff would be free for them.
Cops had to be called to control the crowds, and eventually the system started to work again and debit customer accounts for their purchases.
Since they didn't have enough money on their EBT cards or any money of their own, these "shoppers" just abandoned their full shopping carts and walked out of the store. One woman tried to buy $700 worth of food and other items, with only 49 cents on her card.
Here is what the aftermath of this incident looked like:



Store employees were forced to clean up and restock as much as they could. But much of the food couldn't be put back, so it had to be discarded.

Customers who actually wanted to pay for their food couldn't shop there the next day because the shelves were wiped clean.

Wal-Mart chose not to prosecute in this incident, saying it would basically take the loss on all stolen and damaged items. So why did Wal-Mart give the go-ahead to let these people "buy" the stuff even though the EBT cards weren't working? Because they wanted to make sure people could get food to feed their families.

Note: Wal-Mart is an evil giant corporation that doesn't care about its customers and exploits its employees.

Many people are excusing this "looting" saying it's human nature to take as much as you can get it.

But in truth, it's stealing. Taking something that doesn't belong to you and not paying for it is stealing. Even if there is no mechanism to ever catch you.

This gets back to a larger point I have about the decline of American society. A certain segment of the population is economically worse off than others. We have taught these people that they are poor because others are rich, and they always be poor because the rich will always be rich. That general philosophy leads to incidents like this when people feel they are entitled to things, and they are not stealing, they are taking from an evil big corporation which has subjugated them in the first place.

But nothing has done more to keep poor people in poverty than the attitude that they will always be in poverty.

Note: Did you notice anything strange about that video? At about 15 seconds in you can see carts packed full of stuff, and in the background, a perfectly unmolested display of bananas. Even when they are free no one wants bananas.

We Are Not Doing Enough To Keep Our Children Safe

Shortly after the September 11th attacks I was talking to The Concierge's uncle and he shared with me his plan to prevent future airplane hijackings. If every passenger were shackled to his or her seat during the flight, with one passenger at a time allowed to be set free to use the bathroom, those horrible attacks never would have happened. Obviously we all want to be safer, but we have to make sure not to go too far in abridging freedoms in the hope for increased safety.

Benjamin Franklin said "People willing to trade their freedom for temporary security deserve neither and will lose both."
While I believe Benjamin Franklin had the right idea, some things have changed in the past 200, 220, 230 years. That's the same way I feel about the Constitution. I believe in the Constitution as the foundation for our land, but I also recognize its limits. In those days they needed the right to have guns to form a militia to protect themselves from an oppressive government.
I think the Constitution is great and we should uphold it as the framework for what we want our country to be. But it has been changed, amended and interpreted many times. And I don't some small curbs on gun possession will take away the right to bear arms as granted in the Second Amendment.
However, if this world were perfect, I would wipe away all the guns, no one can have one for any reason, like the U.K. Property crimes might go up, but murders would go way down, especially mass murders.

But that's not possible here so let's deal with the reality of the situation. I hate hunting, but I realize some people enjoy it as a hobby. I don't know why killing animals is so much fun for some people, but I was angry when the government took away my hobby (online poker) so I would be the last one to suggest hunters lose their rights.
I have read the stories, and even written about them, when someone has used a firearm to successfully and lawfully defend their home and property and protect their loved ones from someone wishing to do them harm. I'm sure you could find just as many stories, maybe more, of gun accidents, where little kids got killed playing with their fathers' shotguns.

I keep a kosher home. We have two sets of dishes, don't eat meat and milk together, etc. Outside the home I go nuts. I like the chicken parm at Carmine's. I have been known to devour shrimp at weddings. I like lobster and I love bacon. People often ask me (mostly non-kosher jews), "isn't that hypocrital?" The answer might be yes. But the better answer is, if I am unwilling and unable to do everything, should I do nothing, or should I do something?

We will never ever be totally safe. We will never be able to completely take guns away from people. We will never diagnose every mental illness. We will never have an armed guard, trained gunman in every place a gunman enters, and even if we could I still wouldn't feel safe sending my child to a school where a teacher/principal/security guard is strapped.

But that doesn't mean we should do nothing. Maybe we should place limits on certain "assault weapons." Maybe we shouldn't allow civilians to have magazines that can fire so many rounds per minute, like the one the Connecticut shooter used. You want to make those changes, I'm fine with it. Maybe the next deranged killer will murder 20 people, instead of 26. That would be a great way to save 6 lives, but still a horrible way to lose 20.

You want to loosen privacy laws. You want shrinks to be able to alert law enforcement about potentially violent patients. Fine. You want to ban the mentally ill from possessing guns, that's fine with me.

But let's be realistic about what your gun laws will accomplish: very little. The perpetrators of these crimes don't care that murder is illegal, they certainly aren't going to abide by your gun laws. If someone wants to do harm to someone else, they will do it.

You want to ban violent video games, and violent movies and violent song lyrics, go ahead. But again, remember what Benjamin Franklin said.

You may have read this entire post, looking for answers and not found any. Because I don't have any. I have only a thought, that I have harped on many times on this blog: personal responsibility.

When it comes down to it, it is up to the individual. Guns don't kill people, people kill people. It's an oversimplified cliche, but it is true. A gun without a bad person firing it is fairly benign. A bad person, a crazed, psychotic individual without a gun is just going to look for another way to do harm.

By putting the fault for these crimes in the gun, the mental illness, the violent video game or the bully who picked on the killer in 4th grade, we obscure the responsibility of the individual. We allow sick, scared, hopeless people to separate themselves from their actions.

We need to restore personal responsibility in America. What happens to me is because of what I do and what I choose. What I do and the consequences of my actions are mine and mine alone. We need to do that today. And it starts with you. And me.

The Entitlement Culture

There's lots of talk lately about "fair share" and the "1% vs. the 99%." Radio host Adam Carolla, known as a comedian, hits is right on the head in this 9-minute rant. It is a thing of beauty, and you should listen to the whole thing. But if you don't have that kind of patience skip forward to 5:55 into the video for the story about Mr. Jenkins. I'll offer my thoughts after you've watched it.



This nails it. Everything I have been saying for years. Giving people things they didn't earn teaches them that they don't have to work to get things. In the real world, you do. And I don't even think it's a stretch to go from "I play so I deserve a trophy" to "I live so I deserve a job."
Especially when everyone, including the President, is telling you that your failures are someone else's fault.
Yes, the system can be unfair. Yes, there are some people who have more through no accomplishment of their own, and some have nothing through no fault of their own. But in general, in our society, if we allow it to stay a meritocracy, everyone has the ability to build something for themselves. As long as we don't beat the personal responsibility and desire for achievement out of them.

Fiddling While the Trailer Burns

Last year I wrote about a town in Tennessee where firefighters allowed a resident's home to burn down because he had not paid the $75 annual fire fee.
Some people will never learn. Another resident in the same county, Obion County, had her trailer burn down because she hadn't paid the mandatory fee to the fire department of neighboring South Fulton.
Let's recap: Obion is too small for its own fire department. Nearby South Fulton is willing to respond to fire calls there, if its residents pay a $75 fee each year.
Like it or not, you'd think Vicky Bell would have paid the fee after reading about Gene Crasnick. Crasnick's house burned down and the fire department didn't intervene because he hadn't paid the fee.
Now the same thing happened to Bell's trailer.



Here's the bottom line: when someone tells you "if you don't do this, this might happen" and you still don't do it, then you are accepting the consequences.
Especially, the second time around. Bell had warning. She chose to gamble that her trailer would never catch fire, she lost.
It's unfortunate (and again, if people were in danger the firefighters would have helped) but the system wouldn't work any other way.
You can't charge people after the fact because it would still probably not be enough to cover expenses from fighting the fire, because the fire department costs money just to operate, waiting for a fire.
And if you charged an exorbitant fee, these poor rubes wouldn't be able to pay it.

It comes back to the debate which is tearing apart our country right now: the responsibilities of the individual versus the responsibilities of the society to aid the individual.

We have become way to reliant on others and we need to restore personal responsibility.

I'll Raise My Own Kids Thank You Very Much

Anyone who ever did a 3rd grade science project can tell you a simple requirement of research: eliminate the variables. We can only find out if plants grow better when listening to classical musical as opposed to rock if everything else is the same.

One of my favorite fallacious arguments of all-time is a commercial voiced by Jamie-Lee Curtis which professes that simply eating dinner with your children will stop them from doing drugs. The research shows children from families that eat dinner together regularly are less likely to do drugs than children from families where family sit-down dinners are not as frequent. I am sure this is correct, but post hoc ergo propter hoc. Just because something happened after something else doesn't mean it is caused by something else.

Eating dinner with your kids doesn't keep them from doing drugs. And banning toys from Happy Meals doesn't make kids healthier.

Although that is the argument being used by New York City Councilman Leroy Comrie. He wants to ban meals with more than 500 calories from being marketed to kids, because he thinks that will solve the problem.



The only way to get people to have proper eating habits is to teach them proper eating habits. And the best people to teach proper eating habits are parents. The government can't do it, and the government shouldn't do it. I am sick and tired of the government seeking to ban things that I do in moderation just because other irresponsible people abuse them.

I am talking about poker, but also McDonald's. The night before Passover we had no food in our house. So we went to McDonald's. We got Chase a Happy Meal. 4 chicken mcnuggets, some french fries, a ton of ketchup and a toy of a little dog named Luiz from the movie "Rio." I can't remember the last time before that we had McDonald's but we are teaching him it is a treat, only to be used occassionally.



I always say the biggest problem in this country is a lack of personal responsibility. It's easier to blame someone else for your shortcomings, than to accept them and fix them. And my biggest problem with liberals in general, too often, out of guilt or misguided sympathy, they offer these excuses for people. It's not your fault your kids are fat, McDonald's is marketing Happy meals directly to their malleable little minds and there's nothing you can do about it.

But there is something you can do about it. Teach your kids proper eating habits, which can include the occassional visit to McDonald's.

I'm sure there will be a time in the future when between soccer and baseball and trumpet and whatever other activities, we don't have time for a home-cooked meal. So we decide to take our kids to McDonald's.

That's right. We decide, because they're our kids, not the government's.

I Would Give Him a Dollar to Record My Outgoing Voicemail Message

I often talk about something (though surprisingly I have never written about it here) called the Life Points Theory or PALPT. Basically it postulates that we are all of equal talents and blessings. Those among us who have one amazing gift are often robbed of abilities in other areas (really good looking dumb people, socially awkward geniuses, in the rare case, Stephen Hawking). That brings us to the story of Ted Williams, a homeless man in Columbus, Ohio who gained reknown among locals for his amazing voice.

Watch what happens when a crew from the Columbus Dispatch rolls up on Williams:



That clip has gone viral and the offers are pouring in for Williams. He's reportedly got offers from the Cleveland Cavaliers to do in-arena announcing. Even NFL Films might be interested. Imagine how many bbms Juice and I would exchange about an episode narrated by that guy.

Seems like Mr. Williams is simply a man who fell on hard times, some of it self-inflicted, and is now willing to admit his mistakes, accept responsibility and move on with his great gifts. I wish him the best and hope to hear him voicing over NFL highlights in the near future.

Burning Down the House

Here's the story that's igniting a fierce debate around the nation right now.
Firefighters in Tennessee stood by while the home of Gene Cranick burned to the ground, killing his 3 dogs and 1 cat.
The firefighters from South Fulton responded to the fire but didn't put it out because Cranick hadn't paid his fire fee. He lives outside the city of South Fulton and therefore doesn't pay taxes to support the firefighters. Instead, those residents were told, for an annual fee of $75, the South Fulton Fire Department would respond if the need ever arose.
His neighbor paid the fee, so when the fire spread to his home, firefighters quickly extinguished it.
At first Cranick said he simply forgot to pay the fee, but now it comes out that they sent him a letter and called him.
It's clear Cranick felt that he would never need firemen so he didn't pay the fee. And he clearly thought if there ever was a fire, they'd put it out anyway.

And there's where the debate comes in. Democrats are calling this extreme capitalism where life-saving and property-saving services are only provided to those who can and will pay.
Most people say humanity should have prevailed (and it would have if a person had been trapped) and they should have put of the fire and maybe charged him an exorbitant fee afterwards.

I say it's all Cranick's fault. I bring up personal responsibility again. Cranick was given a choice, pay for a service, or don't get the service. He chose to gamble, he lost. He needs to live with the consequences. If the SFFD bailed out Cranick it would send a message that no one ever need pay the fire fee. An optional fee wouldn't work and the Fire Department would incur huge losses and not be able to help the people who actually pay to support it.

My Personal Crusade to Cure America's Social Ills

I have long said the biggest problem confronting America today is a lack of personal responsibility. In this country we don't make mistakes, we make excuses. We don't hold each other to a high standard of behavior, we don't hold one another accountable for misdeeds. But I do.

Note: for those of you bitterly remembering an incorrect answer on my Facebook quiz, that question referred to the most DISTURBING trend in America. Under that criteria the women who pay thousands of dollars to have their lips look like mine still disturbs me more than anything else.

Today while swiping my metrocard to pay $2.25 for a subway ride a young man hopped the turnstile. As I walked past him I said "next time you should pay like everyone else."
He replied, very dismissively, "ok."

If Mama Poop is reading this she is about to plotz thinking "are you crazy? He could have had a gun."

But I didn't say it in a confrontational manner and being somewhat bigger than this guy I didn't fear a physical reaction.

I just wanted him to know that his criminal behavior did not go unnoticed in my city.

Maybe if more people were as diligent in policing each other as I am the MTA wouldn't have to constantly jack up fares.