Neff Zone Column

Print Edition: Saturday, March 26, 2005

MAKES YOU WANT TO SHAKE YOUR HEAD

You know, sometimes you learn about something that makes you just want to shake your head. It could be a set of circumstances, a piece of strange news, or an odd act of human behavior that requires a good noggin joggle to decipher. Usually, the end result is a feeling of incredulity somewhere between tears and laughter.

For example, I think we can all agree, regardless of political affiliation, that the four people most responsible for this country’s military strategy right now are Bush, Cheney, Rice and Rumsfeld. We can also agree that the sum total of military experience in this group consists of the President’s stint in the Air National Guard. None of the four has ever attended a service academy, commanded a military unit, or actually been in combat. In fact, the most consistent principle now guiding our military policy is a belief by the President that he has a mission, perhaps a divinely inspired destiny, to bring democracy to the world.

Now, last week a couple of noteworthy items were widely circulated. First, came the report that the share of African-Americans in the Army’s recruitment numbers has plummeted by one third over the past five years. Simply put, blacks are not signing up for Army duty at the same rate they have in the past.

Then we learned that because recruitment numbers are lagging so far below target rates, more high school dropouts are being recruited, leading Lawrence J. Kolb, a former assistant secretary of Defense in the Reagan administration to say: "The army you take out of Iraq might not be really as good as the one you sent in."

To stem this trend of low quality recruits, a group of 50 U.S. Congress members filed a bill to reverse the 12-year-old "Don’t ask, Don’t Tell" policy in the military to allow gays and lesbians openly serve in the military. And Kolb advised putting more women on the front lines of combat.

If you put this whole thing together it’s about as bizarre as it gets: An army of uneducated homosexual white women led by conservative Republican Christian commanders with no military experience. Makes you want to shake your head.

On the business front, Wal-Mart is lobbying Congress to extend the workday for truckers to 16 hours, and the proposal is expected to be offered as an amendment to the highway spending bill. Truckers would be allowed to work these 16-hour days as long as they took an unpaid two-hour break, meaning a driver could begin a workday at 8 a.m. and end at midnight. According to the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration, 5,000 people were killed in large-truck crashes in 2003 and those vehicles were three times more likely to be involved in fatal crashes than passenger cars. It’s hard to see how adding hours to a truckers’ work days would do anything other than make our highways more deadly.

Of course the good thing would be that Wal-Mart’s imported products made by virtual slave laborers overseas could be sped to us more quickly resulting in bigger bargains for us and more profits for Wal-Mart. If a few of us get flattened by a semi on our way to the Mart, it’s a small price to pay. Oh yeah, the bill is being offered by Rep. John Boozman of Arkansas, Wal-Mart’s world headquarters. He’s received over $92,000 from the corporation for his re-election campaigns since 2001. Makes you want to shake your head.

Closer to home, just on the other side of Lake Michigan in Wisconsin, Question 62 will be posed to the DNR Conservation Congress Spring Hearings on April 11. Essentially, Question 62, if adopted, would classify free roaming domestic cats as an unprotected species, meaning you could legally shoot them (if they don’t have on an identification collar or are under the owner’s direct control). Bottom line, pet cats would be "game." If you let your kitten out of the house in the morning to do its business, your neighbor would have the right to "harvest" said tabby for use in a tasty feline fricassee.

Cat lovers are so horrified they’ve established their own website at www.dontshootthecat.com . And don’t laugh dog lovers, your golden retriever may be next on the Wisconsin DNR hit list if this principle takes its logical course.

What makes me nervous is that Sheboygan, Wisconsin is known as the "Bratwurst Capitol of the World." Brat ingredients are mysterious enough, so what happens when a person eats one and it results in a strange urge to chase cars or give themselves a bath with their tongue? Makes you want to shake your head.

Jim Neff is a local columnist. Comments to: neffzone@yahoo.com . Neff Zone columns online at http://www.neffzone.com/cadillacnews .