The following is a response to an opinion piece by Robert A. Hall that can be found by Googling his name and searching for the title “I’m Tired.” All quoted material, unless otherwise indicated, belongs to Mr. Hall
Yes we, the latter decades gen Xer’s, the millennial generation, the gen Yer’s are tired too, tired of the baby boomers, the Woodstock generation, the self proclaimed lost generation, described as the small children running around in the photos of Woodstock albums and early decade gen Xer’s acting like they have cornered the market on suffering, hard work and hardship, character, ethics and all the things that make America great. Who are forever the people trying to lecture us on the maxims of life while telling us there are replacement parts for microwaves, along with other outdated, inaccurate tidbits of would be wisdom on the human experience; these same people are the ones jumping up and down about respect in toddleresque fashion, wondering why they don’t get it, people who think their chronological age automatically guarantees them reverence, people who mistakenly assume that the current generation has it so much better than they did, people personified by the following quote:
“I’ll be 63 soon. Except for one semester in college when jobs were scarce, and a six-month period when I was between jobs, but job-hunting every day, I’ve worked, hard, since I was 18. Despite some health challenges, I still put in 50-hour weeks, and haven’t called in sick in seven or eight years. I make a good salary, but I didn’t inherit my job or my income, and I worked to get where I am. Given the economy, there’s no retirement in sight, and I’m tired. Very tired.
I’m tired of being told that I have to “spread the wealth around” to people who don’t have my work ethic. I’m tired of being told the government will take the money I earned, by force if necessary, and give it to people too lazy or stupid to earn it.”
We are tired of people in this age bracket all the way down to those born in the 1970’s assuming we don’t have jobs because we are too stupid or lazy to earn a paycheck, in a time when lawyers and nursing assistants are having trouble finding work; when teachers can be unemployed for 2 years, a 52 year old marketing manager, who should be at his career prime, has been out of work for over a year and a former business man putting out hundreds of résumés is contacting someone as far away as Australia, in hopes of getting a job. Yet I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t call them lazy or stupid. Neither the author or his generational compatriots, those who are in favor of his political, social views bother to notice that the internships, apprenticeships and the business culture they got started with no longer exists; chances, i.e. jobs, are no longer given to those willing to work, hard on their luck or seeking new skills.
Another FYI Mr. Hall doesn’t want to hear, even for those who manage to finish college, forget afford it in the first place, college educations no longer carry any assurance of basic employment, never mind a degree specific career. If you have even a partial college education you are no longer wanted in retail or fast food, but the unemployed are all derelicts in the eyes of former generations, no matter the reason, no matter the conditions they helped create, students walking out of high school and college into recessions they had no part in. It’s great that he’s had a job since 18, rarely has to call in sick, if only we could all be so lucky; the fact remains that the teen unemployment rate is nearly 3 times that of the national average. So even those looking for work to pay for school, to support themselves, to aid their families can’t get it, not to be confused with don’t want it. And no we can’t all work 3-4 jobs, putting ourselves through school full time, some while being single parents; as if that is something to emulate to begin with, driving ourselves to exhaustion, taking the chance of losing all of our jobs to a stint in the hospital or coughing our germs all over our co-workers or kids. Forget the mental toll.
Lets also address the concept of “too stupid” to earn a living; today you are of no value to an employer without a college degree, knowledge of a no less than a dozen computer programs, varied by job, and 1-5 years experience. Unfortunately that describes every high school graduate, college student and most people over 40. Welcome to the requirements to even be considered for work. Hypocrite is a word that comes to mind upon hearing people from the high school diploma is all that is required generation raking the “me generation” over the coals for struggling to meet the demands of employment minus the money for school, minus the training programs to teach the computer skills, no such thing as on the job training. Teens, 20 something’s, college graduates are frustrated with running out of jobs to apply for before running out of motivation, with employers who can’t write a want ad, are guilty of false advertising, are never available to discuss your interest in the position they put forth begging for workers in the current era of how business is done. They are sick of hearing story after story on the news of employers firing workers for law abiding activity done on their own time, refusing to hire individuals based on, sex, marital status, child status, walking gate, condition of their teeth, at the same time having fingers wagged in their face over poor work ethic, lack of ethics and on and on and on.
We find it ironic being labeled too stupid or too lazy by older generations while repeatedly encountering 35-70 year olds who can’t get our order right, who can’t tell us about the products their store sells, who occupy desks at job placement centers, social service/community organizations we go to looking for guidance and they know less about job applications, cover letters résumés than we do, despite having a self proclaimed corner on the market of getting a job themselves, can’t keep track of the paperwork or properly inform us of programs. Then when we seek justice and recompense for the mistakes, we are greeted with managerial staff who couldn’t manage their way out of a paper bag never mind an employee or many of them, who will inevitably cover the backside of the employee in question, that is if they are smart enough to realize there was a mistake to begin with. We are heralded as a generation without manners dealing with individuals decidedly older standing behind customer service counters more likely to yell, use profanity, act just plain rude, refuse to do their job. Interestingly enough, retaining a job appears to be no problem for such persons yet we can’t get one due in large part to perception more than anything else.
“I’m tired of being told that I have to pay more taxes to “keep people in their homes.” Sure, if they lost their jobs or got sick, I’m willing to help. But if they bought McMansions at three times the price of our paid-off, $250,000 condo, on one-third of my salary, then let the leftwing Congresscritters who passed Fannie and Freddie and the Community Reinvestment Act that created the bubble help them—with their own money.”
We are fed up of continued talk about McMansions by people who disagree with the bailouts while watching the news and seeing people not so unlike ourselves or our parents being booted out of modest homes with enough room for the occupants. We are incensed by the so called experts blaming the housing crisis on persons, families trying to live beyond their means when it was, in truth, the adjustable rate mortgage, period, simultaneously ignoring that bundles of these mortgages were then sold on the stock market. Two things that should, but have yet to be, made illegal. “The McMansion” problem grew out of predatory lending practices of saying oh yes you can afford this, trotting out the adjustable rate mortgage, down playing the risk to get individuals to sign on the dotted line. And all of America paid for it in multiple ways; meanwhile, none of the people selling them are behind bars or even up on charges.
Also, come to find out, at least one mortgage lender was falsifying records to qualify the ineligible; AIG went on an executive retreat just after receiving a gargantuan sum of tax payer money. No one has shut them down, not even attempted to do so, but homebuyers are to blame. Hello- this is reason calling all American’s having a knee jerk reaction to this ongoing crisis; the adjustable rate mortgage should never have existed and banks, investors, whomever should not have been able to trade them on the stock market, especially considering they had no idea what the outcome would be. Who the author should be yelling at is the government who let this happen, who has not shut down any of the offending businesses, who has not put one person in jail and has no intention of doing so.
The author says he would be willing to help mortgage holders who got sick or lost their job; somehow I don’t believe him because they make up the other nearly half of this equation. People who tired for 6 months to negotiate with their bank, lender under the government help guidelines only to get the run around, busy signals, lost paperwork, then finally foreclosure; people like the mother of 2 who upon losing her dream job went out and got two other jobs to make ends meet and was denied refinancing because she had too many jobs. People out there right now who cannot take advantage of the historically low interest rates because their mortgage is now greater than the value of their home and lenders refuse to refinance.
“I’m tired of being told how bad America is by leftwing millionaires like Michael Moore, George Soros and Hollywood entertainers who live in luxury because of the opportunities America offers. In thirty years, if they get their way, the United States will have the religious freedom and women’s rights of Saudi Arabia, the economy of Zimbabwe, the freedom of the press of China, the crime and violence of Mexico, the tolerance for Gay people of Iran, and the freedom of speech of Venezuela. Won’t multiculturalism be beautiful?”
While I have no love of Michael Moore, or anyone in the category mentioned; my generational counterparts and I are tired of the idea that, if you criticize American you are un-American, you are bad, some even suggesting you leave the country. We are sick of being blasted for speaking out about what is wrong, what is bad in America and how to make it better only to be called names. Celebrities routinely lend their faces, their wealth to causes spanning the globe; they shouldn’t be shamed into stopping just because Mr. Hall says so or because he doesn’t like what they are giving their voice to. And the only way this country ends up with the religious freedom and women’s rights of Saudi Arabia, the economy of Zimbabwe, the freedom of the press of China, the crime and violence of Mexico, the tolerance for Gay people of Iran, and the freedom of speech of Venezuela, is if people are stifled for their opinions, if people continue to buy into this argument, basically if we make the changes the author suggests. America may well be better than a lot of countries in the world, perhaps even the best, but it still has flaws; trying to eradicate those flaws, reaching for perfection is not wrong, it is exactly what we should be doing. It is how we avoid becoming all the devastating things in other nations.
“I believe “a man should be judged by the content of his character, not by the color of his skin.” I’m tired of being told that “race doesn’t matter” in the post-racial world of President Obama, when it’s all that matters in affirmative action jobs, lower college admission and graduation standards for minorities (harming them the most), government contract set-asides, tolerance for the ghetto culture of violence and fatherless children that hurts minorities more than anyone, and in the appointment of US Senators from Illinois.”
Oh race matters alright but not in pointing out the ills of affirmative action, not in the tolerance of ghetto culture, but in applying for jobs, when the applications of people with corn rows or dreads in their hair (no matter how neat) end up in the trash, when people look at their application see they live in the projects and again the application finds its way into the garbage. Yet somehow here is a man who doesn’t believe we still need affirmative action, with the Tea Party making signs comparing Obama to a monkey, signs using the N- word, with a renewed surge in racism, as if it ever truly went away in the first place. Yes men and women should be judged on the content of their character; funny many of us thought we were.
Race certainly matters today if you so much as look Mexican, Hispanic or Latino; you are likely to be rounded up and questioned, whether you are a US citizen or not, whether you are here legally or not, whether you can obtain a copy of your birth certificate or not. Race has always mattered if you were a minority, particularly a black minority, and had to deal with the police for any reason; sticking our collective heads in the sand won’t improve race relations and it won’t reduce the genuine need for the ills ticked off in the above material.
Again the author’s generation to the current population of those over 30 fails to comprehend you need a degree, certificate, class, licensure for every job in existence above minimum wage; this is reason for lower college admission standards for everyone, not just minorities; it has nothing to do with a different set of rules for persons whose skin color is something other than white. It has to do with everyone now needs a college education to work.
“I’m tired of a news media that thinks Bush’s fundraising and inaugural expenses were obscene, but that think Obama’s, at triple the cost, were wonderful. That thinks Bush exercising daily was a waste of presidential time, but Obama exercising is a great example for the public to control weight and stress, that picked over every line of Bush’s military records, but never demanded that Kerry release his, that slammed Palin with two years as governor for being too inexperienced for VP, but touted Obama with three years as senator as potentially the best president ever. Wonder why people are dropping their subscriptions or switching to Fox News? Get a clue. I didn’t vote for Bush in 2000, but the media and Kerry drove me to his camp in 2004.”
We too are sick of the media; yes even us, the media saturated generation, are over a culture where Brittany Spears and Lindsey Lohan’s latest melt downs make the national news, the morning shows, where Lebron James’ choice of basketball team makes headlines, and not just in the city he chose to move to, where the winner of American Idol is big news along with Mel Gibson’s latest rage and expletive laced tirade. Political attack ads dawn our TV screens every two years slinging mud and no one can find the truth about candidates, national or local, even if they earnestly look for it. Then people wonder why the current crop of 18-25 year olds don’t vote, wonder how Bush got elected twice; get some real news, provide real information. Still despite young people, even 35 and older, begging for substance and objectivity to go with our headlines, news producers and the general public operate under the assumption we all have the attention span of gnats, that we actually like the pop culture bonanza. Bypassing the usual dross, they turn on Fox News where someone will no doubt be shouting at full volume viewpoints they whole heartedly support; maybe if some of the older folks stopped watching Glen Beck, Bill O’Riley, Rush Limbaugh, instead sticking to Diane Sawyer, Katie Couric and Brian Williams, they wouldn’t think everyone below their age bracket was useless or that all of societies ills can be solved by putting your nose to the grindstone.
“I’m tired of being told I must lower my living standard to fight global warming, which no one is allowed to debate. My wife and I live in a two-bedroom apartment and carpool together five miles to our jobs. We also own a three-bedroom condo where our daughter and granddaughter live. Our carbon footprint is about 5% of Al Gore’s, and if you’re greener than Gore, you’re green enough.”
Many young people wish to save the environment, think they are saving endangered species, preserving the world for their children and grandchildren. Some of this is media pushed propaganda or companies looking to make profit off the public’s new sense of awareness, using re-useable drink containers, straws, canvas bags vs. plastic, LED lighting; getting the population on board is a big boom for anyone who sells such products. Other parts of the global warming, clean energy debate has become a race to beat out, or at least keep up with counties like China, winning the race that will signal which country is most progressive and advanced.
However members my generation down to the current crop of older teens is far more irritated with being expected to lower our standard of living to the older generations idea of what should be, many times ignoring the realities of technology it takes to function in the 21st century. Suddenly there are things we are somehow not allowed to have because we’re only on our first job, things we shouldn’t expect because we are still young. Completely lost in that logic is the concept of, having born witness to adult mistakes, now that we are adults we want to do things differently, seek a more balanced life, do things now rather than being robbed of the chance later, want to buy a house in our 20’s have it paid for by our 50’s instead of waiting till our 40’s and not seeing financial daylight before our 70’s. We’ve had it up to here with old fuddy duddies whose concept of luxury is electricity and indoor plumbing, whose technological prowess extends to operating a TV clicker maybe a microwave, people who have never operated a computer, don’t know what an e-mail address is, don’t understand a website or cell phone telling us what we need to live, regardless of if we are using those things to find work, market ourselves, or keep up at our jobs, give our kids the access to technology and information that will keep them from coming back and living on our couch.
Instant gratification is another buzz phrase bantered around by generations past, today try any gratification; to hear Americans talk now it should take the whole of your life to own a vehicle, a computer, go on a simple vacation. Protestant work ethic champions seem to think human beings live to work as opposed to work to live; if our first job wasn’t fast food or retail we are “entitlement handicapped,” forgetting once more that someone can be horrible at scrubbing a floor, sacking groceries, flipping burgers but perfect at designing a new marketing campaign, building the company website. But we all have to start at the bottom taking the chance of being booted out of the running for something better because we suck at something we not only are not interested in but were never good at to begin with. An unfair set of new rules from the ones who turned working minimum wage into something low class, who invented its not about what you know but who you know, only to turn around and accuse us of “inheriting our job or income”.
“I’m tired of being told that drug addicts have a disease, and I must help support and treat them, and pay for the damage they do. Did a giant germ rush out of a dark alley, grab them, and stuff white powder up their noses while they tried to fight it off? I don’t think Gay people choose to be Gay, but I damn sure think druggies chose to take drugs. And I’m tired of harassment from cool people treating me like a freak when I tell them I never tried marijuana.”
It’s interesting he says that considering the number of veterans who have come home and developed either an illicit drug problem or a prescription drug abuse issue as a direct result of what they went though. No, no one shoved white powder up a drug addicts nose, whether gay people choose to be gay is irrelevant, but I’m pretty sure that rape and sexual assault victims, sexual abuse and incest survivors, victims of severe emotional, physical abuse as children (all large percentages of drug users) didn’t ask to be any of those things either. In a time when instances of such horrific crimes are going up, they deserve better than a tough love, I don’t want to hear it, speech. All cases presented here are people trying to cope with things that no human being should have to go through, but by all means lets not give them treatment.
Perhaps Mr. Hall thinks veterans don’t deserve it if they signed up to be in the military. The next question quickly becomes what then is the alternative, let addicts continue committing crimes to support their habit, lock them away in jail for X amount of time only for them to continue the moment they get out because the original problem was never dealt with? Better, lock them up for life; now his tax dollars are going to feed, clothe and house them as an inmate, going to pay for more prisons and potentially letting out far more dangerous people to reek havoc on society, inflict more trauma creating more drug users; vicious cycle anyone?
You’re tired of harassment by the cool people treating you like a freak when you tell them you never smoked marijuana, welcome to our world; we are tired of being harassed for our views on not being the bosses lap dog for 40 hours a week, despite proving that when we work at home we put in more hours not less, that perhaps being a country that minds our own business would be good, if we got out of places like Iraq, they might stop trying to kill us, it might prevent more attacks like 9-11, that just incase global warming is real we should do something about it and using less fossil fuel, cleaning up our garbage isn’t a bad thing either way. Right or wrong- it is what young people believe.
“I’m tired of illegal aliens being called “undocumented workers,” especially the ones who aren’t working, but are living on welfare or crime. What’s next? Calling drug dealers, “Undocumented Pharmacists”? And, no, I’m not against Hispanics. Most of them are Catholic and it’s been a few hundred years since Catholics wanted to kill me for my religion. I’m willing to fast track for citizenship any Hispanic person who can speak English, doesn’t have a criminal record and who is self-supporting without family on welfare, or who serves honorably for three years in our military. Those are the citizens we need.”
Call them undocumented workers, call them a flea circus; we have other things to worry about. Anyone with half a brain is worn out on the argument that illegal immigrants are taking American jobs that A- didn’t exist in the first place and B- the only jobs they are taking are the jobs no white American wants; FYI traffic of illegal aliens went down in 2008 at the height of the recession. Problem, political idiots at Fox News were too busy yelling about when Obama was going to do something regarding immigration reform to catch that scrap of information in the traditional, national news. How dare we, as a nation, shout about them taking our jobs when likewise in 2008 the government denied hundreds, if not thousands, of guest worker visas despite the fact they are responsible for back breaking, hard labor picking the fruits and vegetables that make it into our supermarkets.
How dare we complain about illigals crossing our boarders when we deny them citizenship; boarder town whining is also something see-through on this issue. Boarder towns don’t have an immigration problem; they have a crime problem. When they start arresting the drug dealers and the coyotes charging hundreds of dollars a head to get desperate people who want a better life across the boarder, crime rates will go down. What they will be left with is working people, renting housing, buying goods and contributing to the economy. Equally ridiculous are the all out and out rants about illegal immigrant child molesters, violent criminals beside news reports about Jaycee Dugard, Somer Thompson, Kyron Horman, domestic violence scenarios, cases having nothing whatsoever to do with immigrants and everything to do with home grown American depravity; shouldn’t we all be proud?
Should immigrants learn English when they come here; that would be ideal, but it applies to ALL immigrants not just the Hispanic ones. Plus for them to learn English, you have to give them both the time and the tools to do so; translating into we are still going to need interpreters, documents printed in other languages, ESL courses available and that annoying phone recording: press one for English. The reality is we print a host of important documents in a number of languages, have for years, the least of which being Spanish for Hispanic immigrants, legal or otherwise. We should not however force them to know English before being allowed in the country. Military service should NOT be any track to, requirement of, citizenship; we already have enough American minorities enlisting in various braches of the military and reserves for the 2 years of college it will get them at completion, assuming they don’t get called to duty, die in the line of duty, come back so injured they can no longer utilize it. We have no right to immigrate people solely to be modern day cannon fodder.
“I’m tired of latte liberals and journalists, who would never wear the uniform of the Republic themselves, or let their entitlement-handicapped kids near a recruiting station, trashing our military. They and their kids can sit at home, never having to make split-second decisions under life and death circumstances, and bad mouth better people then themselves. Do bad things happen in war? You bet. Do our troops sometimes misbehave? Sure. Does this compare with the atrocities that were the policy of our enemies for the last fifty years—and still are? Not even close. So here’s the deal. I’ll let myself be subjected to all the humiliation and abuse that was heaped on terrorists at Abu Ghraib or Gitmo, and the critics can let themselves be subject to captivity by the Muslims who tortured and beheaded Daniel Pearl in Pakistan, or the Muslims who tortured and murdered Marine Lt. Col. William Higgins in Lebanon, or the Muslims who ran the blood-spattered Al Qaeda torture rooms our troops found in Iraq, or the Muslims who cut off the heads of schoolgirls in Indonesia, because the girls were Christian. Then we’ll compare notes.”
Ok lets compare notes; America puts itself out there as the worlds policemen and this is what they do with it; innocent civilians get shot, things like Abu Ghraib happen and we have the audacity to wonder why they call us the great satan. Just because what American soldiers did was less horrific doesn’t make it right. If we are going to hold ourselves up as the moral standard, shouldn’t it be higher than the status quo, particularly in that part of the world? We went over there to stop blood-spattered Al Qaeda torture rooms, not create our own version of something we thought was just as bad. We went over there to give rights to the people, protect the basic rights everyone should have, better the lives of the people, not make things worse by killing innocent civilians, by being a clueless occupying force giving the people the furthest things from what they actually need.
Of course journalists who have been imbedded with troops, covered war zones don’t want their kids near a recruiting station; they don’t want their kids to go through that, to see that. It makes them good parents who want better for their children, not some stack of wimps “too good” to serve the nation in uniform. Likewise, journalists over the years have, with appalling frequency, discovered instances where soldiers used the just following orders, split second decision making excuse to cover up atrocities committed. And how dare anyone chastise a young person, of any age, who looks around at the dead, maimed, mutilated, burned soldiers and says peace is better than war, who has the courage to look at human cost of an effort to change another cultures beliefs and say maybe we shouldn’t be doing this, to say nothing of a person who says serving in the military is not for me rather than having a mental breakdown in the middle of a war zone costing more lives.
“I’m tired of people with a sense of entitlement, rich or poor. Speaking of poor, I’m tired of hearing people with air-conditioned homes, color TVs and two cars called poor. The majority of Americans didn’t have that in 1970, but we didn’t know we were “poor.” The poverty pimps have to keep changing the definition of poor to keep the dollars flowing.
I’m real tired of people who don’t take responsibility for their lives and actions. I’m tired of hearing them blame the government, or discrimination, or big-whatever for their problems. Yes, I’m damn tired. But I’m also glad to be 63. Because, mostly, I’m not going to get to see the world these people are making. I’m just sorry for my granddaughter.”
We are all tired of the concept of wanting opportunities being considered a since of entitlement, becoming educated, like the generations before us told us we should, then being vilified for expecting the things we were told would be available, wanting to work 1 job for 40 hours not between 50 and 80, just to get by. Or the newest idea if you can’t find a full time job, string together 3-4 part time ones. Uh- Mr. Hall this is not the 1970’s; most homes and apartment buildings come with air conditioning. Not to mention we see what happens when they don’t; the recent heat wave along the eastern seaboard cost a double-digit number of lives, usually elderly people and children. Asthma rates have also nearly tripled in the last 40 years, but again by all means throw the most vulnerable under a bus because people in a pervious decade didn’t have it.
All TV’s are color; two cars is what you do when two people work at the same time to keep a roof over a family’s head and you can’t car pool. There are no “poverty pimps;” the numbers keep changing because the cost of living, the cost of raising a family keeps going up. Prices for basic necessities keep increasing while wages stagnate; the media was too busy reporting on “balloon boy” to report that at the same time Colorado had just voted to lower their minimum wage. And they are not called poor they are called the struggling middle class who happen to be evaporating before our eyes; what happens to our economy then? What happens when all of their consumer buying power disappears, nothing good that’s for sure.
Actually the sense of entitlement needs to go UP not down; if you work, are willing to work a 40 hour work week that should be enough to afford a color TV, an air conditioned dwelling, and providing there are two people and two incomes, yes two cars. They should also be able to save for luxuries they wish to purchase I-pods, Blue Ray players, computers, cellphones. Why, because this is the United States of America not Zimbabwe, Venezuela, Mexico, Iran or Saudi Arabia, and if we can’t do that, then it’s time we start trying rather than making exhaustive lists of what we’re tired of. Everyone who wants a job, wants to work should be able to get work at a living wage. Students who do well in school wishing to go on to higher education should not be financially hindered from doing so; likewise if the career path they choose to take requires more than a B.A. they should have financial access to it, providing they keep their grades at a certain level. Every company advertising a job mandating over 6 months of experience should be required to regularly offer an internship/ apprenticeship of equal time. Why all of these things, because it’s the only way to make the employment and education system work, the only way to give people opportunities, to prevent more people being on welfare
We are tired of fanatical bizarre “solutions” coming from those older, should be wiser than us, that serve to solve nothing, create more problems and edge us further and further toward a police state all in the name of quelling things people who have less time on this planet to kill than us, find annoying. We are OD’d on responsibility lectures doing everything as right as humanly possible and getting nothing to show for it, just trying to get by as hardworking and financially strapped as the generations previous, more of us living in poverty, raising children on a wing and a prayer contending with public scorn in the process. Frankly it’s the older folks who need to take responsibility for their attitude; if they are going to tell young people, in essence, life is hard get used to it, life isn’t fare, so what? Guess what it goes both ways.
What we would all like to know from Mr. Hall is, while occupying his Massachusetts senate seat, how many internships and apprenticeships did he create or guard to make sure young people had a way to get employed; what did he do to address discriminatory hiring practices in the state he was responsible for? Before carping about how much people spend on what, who is called poor and who isn’t, what did he do to strike down legislation mandating the phasing out of the common light bulb in favor of the energy efficient, drastically more expensive, compact florescent or LED lighting? If he’s so concerned about people and their color TV’s, then he should have been an opponent to the digital transition creating the need for converter boxes or new TV’s, by the way gotten to get news and weather because you sort of need to know the tornado is coming before it’s on top of your house, gotten so that they don’t become completely ignorant citizens. I too feel sorry for his granddaughter and so will most American’s in a few years if the “working tired” gets their way.