There is a perception in the popular culture that those serving in the military are little more than unimaginative and uninformed automatons. For [those] that know us best, they know that we can be some of the most engaged, engaging, and creative people around.
My example for today was discovered a couple months ago.
Written by Jerry Collins, a fellow No-LOAD Marine.
Dear Death
Dread not the one conceived to come for you
But I, and the forefathers of the wings upon which I stand.
I too shall cast with my brothers
That beautiful and far-reaching shadow of freedom across the lands
So that the young, the old, and the innocent may escape your burning clinch,
Your wretched breath, and your sickening belch.
You will, fall to your demise.
And from one humongo-ginormous deafening echo of thunder
Across the blue skies of our great nation,
I will have rudely intruded, eaten the scraps from your table, slept in your bed,
And hand delivered the confiscation of your last breath.
…Your secret admirer,
United States Marine.
I had a little media frustration the other day.
As some will recall, Congress decided to get the U.S. Federal government out of the helium business back in the late 1990s. We got into the helium business during WWI when helium filled dirigibles were considered pivotal to our national defenses.
We stayed in the helium business after the rise of the aircraft carrier and other airborne platforms because national defense policy has a lot of inertia. Also businesses liked having cheap helium.
During the early 1990s, most media outlets were complaining that our national strategic helium reserve was no longer required for military preparedness. They claimed that the program was nothing more than a grand subsidy to private businesses. There were lots of stories about places that sold helium filled balloons with the context of "why should the taxpayer subsidize this?"
A couple days ago, I heard a report on NPR about the imminent closure of the reserve. Here we are over 15 years later and the market has yet to spool up the production capacity to meet current demand.
So businesses are running out of helium. The story began with the ubiquitous balloon store owner talking about how she cannot get enough helium to run her business. It moved on from there to detail how helium is used in a lot of different industrial processes. It included a report from an electronics manufacturer in the U.S. that had opted to use other inert gasses where it could, and to turn off the helium when it was not in use for production.
The context of the story was to promote a bill currently before Congress that would extend the federal government's involvement in helium production until the free market can catch up.
The frustration isn't so much about the media pushing for the end to this program and then pushing to extend it when the logical results of that policy come to fruition.
The frustration is with a media, in this specific instance NPR, that simply has no real understanding of free market economics. Our existing helium supply is quite large. Even though the market price for helium is increasing, it hasn't gotten to the point where private business owners can justify the expense of building new production facilities to compete with the helium that still is in the reserve.
The price of helium will eventually increase to that point as the volume in the reserve is slowly depleted. There will be some volatility in the price of helium as production, storage, and use reach new balance points. There will be some short term economic pain. But eventually, production will increase to meet demand, albeit with less storage capacity.
And if Congress acts to keep the feds in the helium business, that painful period will last for years and perhaps decades as private businesses discover that they cannot compete with a government subsidized product.
Could someone assign these folks to read a little more Thomas Sowell and a little less Paul Krugman?
I hope to ride this new Cedar Point 'coaster very soon!
Better than Spy vs. Spy!
I have a longer post...or an extensive series of shorter posts...in mind to talk about some recent health issues that I have been dealing with. I hope it turns out well.
In the meantime, this is me from the fall of 2010. A group of friends went camping. We also did a kayak run down the Muskegon River.
The United States government left our military members in southeast Asia after the Vietnam war.
The validity of that statement has been frequently debated, proven, debunked, held near and dear, and held in contempt. It has spawned an entire industry.
The POW/MIA bracelet I wear bears the name of one Marine that very well could have been alive at the end of the war. Although the odds of finding him alive today seem remote at best.
The Laotian government claimed to have had hundreds of US military members held as POWs at the end of the Vietnam war. The US government declined to include Laos in the talks that concluded that conflict. What happened to those men?
At least one of them remains alive today.
John Hartley Robertson is in his early 70s. He has a wife and four children. He no longer speaks English.
And he is the subject of a documentary by Michael Jorgensen.
After Toronto, the documentary moves to Washington for a highly anticipated screening May 12 at the seventh annual GI Film Festival. Jorgensen acknowledges his film has many unanswered questions: Why didn’t the military contact Robertson’s family since it’s now known reports of his survival were circulating as early as 1982? And if Robertson was known to be alive in Vietnam, “Why did the Americans leave him there for all those years?” Are there other John Hartley Robertsons in Vietnam? (Jorgensen says “a highly placed source” has told him there are and it’s not because the Vietnamese won’t let them go; “it’s like [the U.S. military] doesn’t want them to come home.”) But there’s hope the Washington showcase can build some momentum for answers.Why indeed does the US government not want these surviving POWs to return home?
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