Government Waste and Other Things on My Mind the Past Week.

There are a few things I wanted to talk about this week, and they entail a lot of subject matter, so I will just get started.

The first thing I wanted to talk about is the job application process.  I work at home now (thankfully!) at a very satisfying position, but on occasion if something comes across my path that I think I may be interested in applying for to get a little extra income, I jump on the chance to do so.  Recently, one of those entailed a company not far from where we live that handles a lot of Federal government contracts (for either the FDA or ATF, if I am not mistaken).  The job would have been perfect, and I had all the right qualifications for it.  However, due to a security clearance issue - apparently, if you have a low credit score, you are a threat to national security! - I didn't get the position.  Knowing how this was unfair (and in Maryland law, it is even illegal to pull credit for a job application) I blasted said company, and that forms the basis of my first topic of discussion today.  It is not a huge secret that the Federal government wastes a lot of money on these contract deals - for instance, some of them have budget allowances for $1,000 toilet seats - and that is the first point in this topic I want to address.  In case you haven't read the news yet, there is a national debt that runs in the trillions of dollars, an amount that is inconceivable for even a person like Donald Trump to fathom, as the richest man in the world doesn't even have close to a trillion in assets.  Yet, for some reason, these Federal contractors allot budget items in obscene amounts for insignificant things - $50 for a light bulb, a thousand bucks for a toilet seat, etc.  Yet, when a person who works hard, has the skill, and is a perfect fit for a certain job falls on hard times due to no fault of their own, all of a sudden they are disqualified because of a damned credit score for a job they might otherwise have had.  And, if that isn't bad enough, the recruiter or person reviewing one's application will have the audacity to recommend that you get credit counseling, etc.  This coming from a person who represents a corporate interest that allots a thousand bucks to a toilet seat, and then they have the audacity of accusing you of some sort of irresponsibility just because maybe your family had some medical issues, or someone in your house lost their job, and it caused the bills to fall behind.  A person from one of these idiotic companies who dares to lecture me on my financial situation should maybe re-assess how important those $1,000 toilet seats are - I told a certain recruiter that they would save us the taxpayers a fortune if they just went down to the local Wal-Mart and bought a $5 toilet seat that works just as good.  Talk about credit management.  Of course, when these contractors have the useless swamp leeches we call Congressmen bankrolling their little projects (with our money, don't forget!) as role models, it doesn't leave a good impression.  Any rate, my solution to much of the unnecessary government waste of our tax dollars would be to give the people who are entrusted with those budgets a crash course in how to shop - $5 toilet seats are just fine, for one, and instead of a $50 light bulb, one can buy four times as many for under two bucks at your local Dollar General.  But, we must remember something too - government hacks and corporate bigshots don't think with the same common sense many of us here in the land of reality have to, and so they waste money that doesn't belong to them on a decadent and gross scale.  If we are to reform government, it maybe should start with re-assessing the money that is spent on frivolous expenses.  Therefore, the next time you apply for a Federal contract job and you get rejected because you have less than stellar credit, you have the right to demand a financial statement from that company that accounts for every penny they receive courtesy of our tax dollars.  If one of these companies is smart enough to furnish that (it can be several pages long, so brace yourself!) then it is important to do a line-by-line audit of what is spent, and when it comes to "incidentals," learn how to price them for yourself, give an assessment of your conclusions in writing, and put the company on notice that they cannot waste money you have worked your butt off to pay in taxes while at the same time criticizing your credit history without even knowing a blinking thing about you or the situations that may have lowered a credit score, etc.  I guarantee, if more of us stood up and really asserted our own rights in regard to the way some companies act, things could be different and more deserving people would be working in jobs that they are meant to work in.  Anyway, that is my Economics rant - at some point in the future, I need to also deal with my own position on Economics, which is a view called Distributism.  I may do that in the next couple of months if time allows.

A second issue I wanted to talk about is when your peers think they are all of a sudden your superiors, when in reality they are not.  Interpersonal relationships are integral to humanity, as we are not meant to be mere "islands unto ourselves."  However, the dignity of personhood (a subject I have addressed at length on my Sacramental Present Truths page from a philosophical and theological basis, beyond the scope of this discussion) dictates that we need to be respectful of each other and that we learn to communicate in such a way that embodies that respect.  I have dealt with my share of jackasses over the years - I have them in my own family (both blood relatives and in-laws), as well as working with some on the job and also even in church settings - and as I get older I find myself having less tolerance for them.   An old piece of Appalachian wisdom applies to me personally on this - if a snake gets stepped on, it will strike, and in the same way if I get stepped on and disrespected, I will have a swift response.   Over the past couple of months or so as I am settling into a new home and assuming new responsibilities with our new parish church, at times everything I have to deal with can be overwhelming, and recently that was not helped much when a fellow church member decided to anoint himself my personal "jackass of the month."  Part of serving in leadership of a small parish church in a lay capacity is doing several minor things, and at times those minor things can be a pain in the butt when you have to deal with rented facilities and such.  One of the other lay leaders in the parish who has been there for a while has been increasingly aggressive in how he talks to me personally, and finally I had to go to our parish priest to straighten it out.  The problem with this particular person is that due to a personality factor, his line of work he retired from, or some other factor, he tends to be bossy and treats others like he is superior to them - for instance, instead of politely asking for help, this individual has a tendency to bark orders, and the situation that brought it to a head occurred earlier this past week, and that is the story I want to relate now as it ties into another of my pet-peeves.

The individual in question had recently had a very important medical procedure done which required him to take an extended time of recovery.  Before I get into that story, let me talk about something that I consider a pet-peeve on a major scale.   If someone is either celebrating something or has an important need, I have no problem making a nice gesture to let them know that I care - it is just common decency to do that.  However, if the person who is the recipient of my act of kindness in any way does something disrespectful, I take it as a high insult.  In the case of this individual I am talking about now, he had a medical procedure done and was recovering.  Despite what feelings I may have, I try to reach out and be encouraging as much as possible.  Many people over the week have been wishing this person well, and encouraging them by saying they were praying for them, etc.  I of course felt led to do the same, and not only did I take time out of my busy schedule to write the person and tell this individual they were in my thoughts and prayers, but I even put them on a prayer list at my former parish too.  With many people who did the same, this person would write back and tell them how much they appreciated the gesture, and then proceed into a conversation about the status of their health, etc.  However, not so with me - when I sent my encouragement to this individual, I get an email back with a flippant "thank you" as well as a bunch of orders being barked at me over cyberspace as well as this person assuming to school me in theology (I mean, who am I - I only have a Bachelor's in Church Ministries, and am finishing up a Master's in Catechetics, so I don't know anything, right??).  The whole tone of the conversation was very insulting to me, and I seem to be the only one this person responded to in that fashion, and I really took offense, so much so that it vexed me almost the entire week.  I was so upset about it, as a matter of fact, that at the end of the week I asked for the parish priest's intervention - our parish priest, who is a compassionate man with a sincere heart, profusely apologized and assured me he would take care of it and have a talk with this person about their attitude.  I trust our parish priest with that too, and am confident he will get the issue resolved, but it still is rattling.  Honestly, I would expect a person who has just underwent a very serious medical procedure to be a little more contemplative with their life and also learn how to adjust their attitude a bit, wouldn't you think?  Apparently this individual didn't get that message, but perhaps they should have.  As a disclaimer, any identity of this person will remain confidential as well as anything which would determine this person's identity (such as gender), but I am sure that if this person reads my words here, they will know who they are.  By the time they see this, the whole thing may be resolved too, and that is what I would prefer.  As insulted and upset as I get at people like this, I am always open to a peaceful resolution if the other party is so moved, and I can readily forgive a person if they choose to deal with the issue and come to me about it.  This is a good rule of thumb too - even the most heinous of personal offenses are forgivable, but the effectiveness of the dispensed forgiveness is contingent upon the person themselves; it's always available, but they have to be willing to receive it just as willing as I am to dispense it.  On a theological level, the same thing applies even to salvation - it is a free gift available for all, but it is up to the individual to accept or reject it.  That could be the genesis of a future SPT post too!  Any rate, it feels good though to vent in a constructive way, and it's also OK to do so - some people are under the mistaken notion that even Christianity makes people suppress their emotions, but Christians are not Vulcans.  After all, God gave us the feelings and emotions we have, and rather than suppress them we should express what we feel in constructive ways.  For me it is writing like this, either for you as the reader to see or in my personal journal.  For others, it may be a 15-minute session with a punching bag in a local gym - sometimes channeling your energy into beating the crap out of a canvas bag full of sand is healthier than driving oneself insane from suppressed tension that keeps building and impairing one's physical well-being as it does so.  Therefore, if I were to give a lesson today on this, I would say find an outlet when people or situations get the best of you, and by all means vent in whatever way helps you!  You'll be better for it in the long run.

The final thing I wanted to talk about today is more on my own inspiration about things.  Over the years, I have tended to be inclined toward a rather eclectic spectrum of personal preferences that have in turn defined my character to some degree.  Whether it is listening to Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony, or reading the Georgian author Konstantin Gamsakhurdia's The Right Hand of the Master, many things inspire me in different ways and at different times as the mood strikes.  I have never dealt with this in detail before - mainly because I have never formulated a way to express it in writing - but it is a part of me that has been integral since I was a very young boy.  Even now, I struggle to pinpoint exactly what I want to say, although in my own mind I can see it for myself and perfectly understand it.  My wife and I, for instance, love all the Star Trek series, but of all of them the one which most captures my interest and is by far my favorite is Deep Space Nine.  Much of the story arc of this series centers around the person of Benjamin Sisko, who arrives at the station essentially a broken man - his wife was killed by an evil alien transhumanist species called the Borg at a battle called Wolf 359, and he is reluctant to even be accepting the assignment.   In Sisko, I have seen how I have felt - it is a dark place to be, as you are alone, and you just feel like running away from all of it and starting over.  I have struggled with a lot of that myself over the past several months as well, as a lot of adjustments have taken a toll on me personally and I still am dealing with a lot of it even as I write these words.  Any rate, while he is settling into this new role as commander of a large space station constructed by a Nazi-like people called the Cardassians, who in turn had recently brutally occupied the planet the station orbits, a small planet called Bajor, a series of events end up transforming Sisko and his outlook.  First, an unusual anomaly called a "worm-hole" opens some distance from the space station, and upon exploring it, Sisko and his crew end up at the other side of the galaxy in what is called the "Gamma Quadrant."  However, while traveling through this "worm-hole," Sisko encounters some alien life-forms that the people of the planet Bajor call "the Prophets," and his encounter with them makes him a reluctant religious icon to the people on that planet.  In time though, Sisko actually embraces the role, and he becomes what is called by the Bajoran people the "Emissary to the Prophets."   There is something about that entire story arc that just speaks to me - it embodies the desire of all of us to possess a destiny beyond ourselves, and I believe that is one of the great appeals of this show.  That is something I myself have been pondering a lot recently, and I have had to do some reassessment of my own life, as well as knowing that inside of me is the real essence of who I am which needs to be released.  The question though is, how do I do that?  It seems just as I have one thing figured out, I come up against a brick wall and have to keep looking.  Yet, deep within my own being, I know that there is something specific I need to be doing, and that the status quo is no longer acceptable to me.  It became more real to me in recent months when, like the fictional Captain Sisko, I myself faced a sort of "Wolf 359" of my own.  Just a couple of weeks prior to our move up here, Barbara and I had done a sort of "scouting trip" of the area and also decided in the process to visit my grandparents in Parsons, WV.  The trip actually went quite well, as we inadvertently scoped out the neighborhood we live in now (albeit we were looking at another house at the time further down the street), and Barbara had a fantastic job interview in Baltimore that week in addition.  However, being it was December, we left out that following Saturday in some very frigid weather - there was snow on the ground, and our little Ranger pickup that we came up in had to travel over a steep mountain called Dry Fork, just southeast of my hometown of Parsons, to get back on the interstate.  As we were ascending the mountain ridge, I cautioned Barbara about keeping an eye out for "black ice," and not 30 seconds after I did that, we hit a patch.  Our truck spun in the road, and then it flipped and rolled into the side of the mountain, totaling the car and badly shaking us up.  Fortunately, and by God's grace, we were not injured, but the Ranger didn't survive.  Luckily too, I have a lot of relatives in that area, and one of them just happened to come by - she gave us a lift into nearby Dry Fork to a mechanic's shop, and the mechanic was a very nice guy whose daughter-in-law took us back into Elkins so we could get a rental car (which ended up being a 2011 Mustang - nice ride!) and the trip ended better than we expected.  But, like Sisko, it began a sort of personal transformation in me, and Barbara felt the same way.  From that moment, we resolved never to just merely settle for less when opportunity opens doors, and it has also made me more assertive as well - I find myself being more straight-spoken than I used to be, and not as prone to take crap from people or institutions who should recognize I deserve better than that.  That transformation also helped me to realize that the stability of my own family and household takes priority over anything, and that even includes church work.  In the ensuing months, I have come to a lot of other conclusions as well, but time nor space do not permit me to elaborate on those here, but perhaps at some other time.  When I listen now to Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony, or when I read something like William Saroyan's short stories, something within me resonates with a "Yes!" in that those pieces of music and literature are speaking to something at the core of my being.  As I have time (which is a precious commodity these days!) to ponder things, they start to come together.   There are many answers to different things I seek even now, but I also cannot escape the feeling that the answer possibly lies to those situations within myself - the resolution, in other words, is literally right under my nose!  The job now is digging it out.  And, that can be the real challenge!

I feel as if I have indulged enough today in my observations, but at some point there is another aspect I will discuss separately, and that is what dreams tell us sometimes.  Did you ever have those dreams where you can see every detail, and the dream sticks with you for days after?  Or, let's say you have had dreams about things for years, and there is like a common backdrop for the dream.  All of a sudden, you go somewhere and you see almost the exact building or landscape feature that was in the dream!  Since we have moved here, that has happened a lot, and maybe at some point I will discuss that, as it would be an involved discussion in itself.

Thanks again for allowing me to rant and go on, and as always I always appreciate you dropping by for a visit on this, my virtual "front porch."  Come back to visit again sometime, and I wish the best for you as you go about the activities of your week and managing your own responsibilities.