Today, I would like to honor that great American Charles Yost. Charles died about three years ago. He had been my benefactor for about fourteen. He allowed me to collect a paycheck for resolving issues I had with theories of electromagnetism and Einstein’s relativity. Since his death, I continually find more reasons to appreciate him.

Tonight was one such instance. I attended the first local Obama house meeting to get educated about the stimulus bill. The video bombed, being less informative than a half-hearted listen to the sound bites from the drive-by media. Most of the time was spent going around the room collecting sob stories on how each person had been adversely affected by the economy. It was pathetic. I was better off than all of them, and I credit Charles.

You see, Charles had an unnatural fear of going into debt. The only thing he may have feared more was government. He astounded bankers when they found out he kept his books in the black, and he ingrained in his successors’ skulls his irrevocable decree that debt was an absolute no-no. And so, when other businesses were overextending, buying into the “build it and they will come” theory of management, we took a more traditional course. As it turned out, they didn’t come, and it looks like they never will. Businesses are now having to cut back to pay their debts.

Government, however, did not learn that “they” are not constrained to answer the summons of a building. Stupid government policies will always appear less harmful than they are because people, unlike dead matter in the lab, have a will to survive and will mitigate harms as they are able. Yet, all but two people in the room tonight were sold on Keynesian economics (good article). It didn’t work for FDR or for the Japanese, but we were told we have to put aside fear (the PC word for accounting) and hope that the roads we build today will lead to the manufacture of automobiles tomorrow – green ones, that is.

All but two in the room were high on nationalizing the banks. “Government can’t even run government!” remarked Robert. Marcel responded with a list of government successes that included Medicare and Social Security.

Our assignment was to share our sob stories with our congress critters. I suppose mine would be, “I’m well because my employer kept his business out of debt.”