OPEN FORUM: Management

By DELMAR LEATHAM

I have often thought that I could support euthanasia if I got to decide who goes first, second, third and so on. I’m sure I could manage everyone’s life in a manner that would benefit me.

Kings became kings because they were the biggest and strongest. The King made his subjects do what was best for him. In an effort to avoid this type of slavery the people of the United States decided to have a President who was elected by the people. This would have worked but the politicians got involved and wanted government to do what was best for them.

The problem became how to get elected. You can buy votes if you have money or you can keep your money and use tax dollars to buy the votes. Let’s tax the people which will make them mad but then we can give them back ten percent of their money and they can get happy in the same voting booth where they got mad.

I’m reminded of the words of Casey Stengel. He was the gifted baseball manager who said, “The secret of managing is to keep the guys that hate you away from the guys who are undecided.”

Only half of the people eligible to vote take the time to register. Of the people registered, only half go to the polls on election day. Now the politicians just needed a way to divide those who vote so they could keep the guys that hate them away from the guys who are undecided.

I guess that is why politicians formed the two-party system. Once they get the parties mad at each other they run away to Washington D.C. or Carson City to decide how to give us back our money.
Once a candidate for office is elected the voters quickly find that it’s better to dance with the devil who leads than try to teach him the correct dance steps. If you could just call the dance tune maybe your partner could learn to dance.

Currently, some political leaders don’t seem to know how to dance and are unwilling to try and learn the steps. Every four years those public servants with two left feet declare that they will again be attending the fall dance.

I did take a dance class in college. I thought it would be a good way to meet girls. My mistake, those college girls actually wanted to learn to dance. Maybe they were hoping to go into politics and be better prepared than their male counterparts.

Everyone that doesn’t go into politics chooses to do the next best thing. They go into management. We manager our homes, we manage our finances, we try to manage our children.
We become so good at management that we believe we can manage other people’s homes, children and finances – even other people’s marriages.

The best place to get advice is from someone who has failed at all of their attempts to manage. Who else knows all of the mistakes that can be made.

Never take advice from someone who has all the answers. In fact, never take advice from another person. You are quite capable of making your own mistakes. It is best if you leave profiting from your mistakes to the politicians. They follow the advice I received when I became a manager: Blame your failures on the new guy, who learned his job skills from the old guy, who learned his skills from the dead guy. They certainly have plenty of dead guys to learn how to succeed in politics.

I came to realize that my desire to control the lives of others, was a source of madness in my life. If I had not wised up, I could have strayed in to a meaningless life in politics.

If you are going to be in charge of something you have to be responsible for what happens. If you don’t like the way your life is turning out, just change the rules. If you are born a man and want to compete in sports just pretend, you’re a woman. If you’re a woman who is experiencing male chauvinism in the workplace just decide you are a man. Nature made gender rolls but only skilled political leaders can legislate nature to a back seat.

Let’s sing the National Anthem at the baseball game and then shout “play ball.” I’m sure a politician will throw out the first pitch and show us how the game is played.