It’s not really surprising Congress has turned over billions of dollars in taxpayer cash to financial institutions and then not asked for an accounting of the money.
These are the same people set to receive an automatic 3 percent pay increase next year.
How can they even consider keeping a raise when many in the private sector have gone without for a long time now? Unemployment’s on the rise, the housing market continues to struggle and the stock market will take years to recover from the losses it as incurred during past few months.
I don’t find anything that comes out of Washington, D.C., surprising any more or fact that matter funny.
The people we have elected and sent there need to get their acts together. They might want to take a lesson from Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels who recently decided state employees should not have a pay raise this coming year. Many in the private sector haven’t had raises for longer periods than a year.
Everyone needs to tighten their belts until we get through this recession or depression.
I once thought that we ought to ask Iraq to pay us back the money we have spent rebuilding that country, because we need the money here. But if they did so, Congress would find some other way to squander it.
It’s easy to see why Congress’ approval rating has fallen from about 50 percent four years ago to 20 percent recently.
I love reading and borrowing Will Roger’s quotes about government. Here’s one I think fits the present situation pretty well.
“The taxpayers are sending congressmen on expensive trips abroad. It might be worth it except they keep coming back.”
Let’s send them all aboard and then not let them come back home.

I’ve always agreed to go shopping for Christmas presents with my wife at least one time before Dec. 25 arrives.

Like most men, I would prefer not to go anywhere near a store this time of year or any other time of the year for that matter.

Generally things go badly when my wife drags me along when it’s time to shop for Christmas presents, and I know she really regrets having to listen to me whine the whole time we’re out.

But I’m feel like I’m better than one of my brothers-in-law, who went shopping with his wife at Christmas one time and just starting pulling toys for his grandkids off the shelves and putting them in the cart. His wife promptly dismissed him, and he went to a Colts game. That’s how you do it.

I was really mad at him for awhile, but only because he was smart enough to come up with the idea. I even envied him until my wife later told me he went shopping with his wife one other time and even took the initiative to venture out one day for his own shopping trip. Talk about ruining it for the rest of us.

But the day I decided to go shopping for Christmas this year generally went better than I thought it would. That may have been because my 16-year-old son decided he wanted to go as well. He kind of serves as a buffer between his mom and me. He also tends to behave as well as any 16-year-old can be expected to this close to Christmas.

You don’t have to look very far to see that the economy is bad, but you sure couldn’t tell it from the crowds we encountered at a mall on the south side of Indianapolis that shall remain nameless.

The place was so packed I was afraid once we made it inside the ring of cars circling the parking lot we would never get out of there in time to make my family’s annual Christmas party.

I think there needs to be some ground rules put in place about shopping at Christmas time.

For one thing, I don’t believe any children should be allowed in the toy section. I found myself in a near panicked state after spending about 10 minutes in the toy section of one store.

I found myself in a similar state while visiting the electronics sections in that same store. I could just not believe the number of adults and children crammed into those two departments. It’s easy to see what most people will be getting for Christmas this year.

As always, I managed to survive the day despite a lot of moaning and groaning, but its a good thing Christmas only comes around once a year.

I’ve seen a lot of changes in the newspaper industry during my 22-plus years as a reporter.

We were still typing stories on typewriters when I was attempting to learn the trade at IUPUI back in the early 1980s. In fact, my first job was at The Banner in Brownstown, and we typed our stories on typewriters for a few months before computers were introduced.

Back in those days, we only ran color photographs for special occasions, and we still used film to record images. The move to digital photography sure was great because you generally didn’t have to worry about whether or not you actually had something when you returned to the office after an assignment. I sure blew a couple before that time by taking photos without having film in the camera.

Another big change came about when we quit cutting and pasting stories on pages and began paginating those same pages on computers. For some of us that led to a move away from reporting and more time working on pages.

There sure where some struggles in the early days of pagination when computers systems were sometimes not up to the task of producing pages consistently.

Now most of the rough spots have been rounded off.

None of the changes I’ve seen may be as big as the one we just went through here at The Tribune.

On Friday, we printed the last newspaper in this building. From here on out, The Tribune will be published at The Republic’s printing center at Walesboro. The Republic already prints many other daily papers and it just makes sense that central printing locations can do a more efficient job.

The move also means a shift in deadlines and a change in the hours most of us in the newsroom work. It also means less people are working at our plant and made for a quite Monday morning as I began my day.

I believe most of the changes over the years have been good. They’ve generally made life a little easier although they’ve meant learning different ways of doing things. They’ve also meant a better end product in my book.

I don’t see any reason why the most recent change would be any different in the long run. Besides that I think the day may be coming when newspapers when only be available on-line. At one point, I didn’t think that would happen before I retired. I’ve now changed my thinking. It may be sooner rather than later.