Congressman Jason Chaffetz and Social Security

A few weeks ago before the Utah State Republican convention, I was at a meeting with Congressman Jason Chaffetz at the holiday Inn express in American Fork, Utah. I made a short statement and asked Congressman Chaffetz a question.
"Congressman a few years ago my company had a great client located in Tennessee that figured out how to burn garbage with zero oxygen present and create carbon while at the same time creating a Megawatt of electricity with which they provided power to the locals. They then sold the carbon to nurseries as fertilizer. The guy they hired to raise money for them in Denver was paying the people who had invested first with the money of the people who were now investing. This of course was a "ponzi" scheme and the SEC shut them down and threw them in prison.
Question: Can you please explain the difference between what this company did and what congress has done with Social Security and why congress has not been shut down by the SEC? Might I add that the company in Tennessee was profitable and paying salaries to employees, and taking crap and turning it into something useful, while congress is not profitable and takes something useful and turns it into crap.

Congressman Chaffetz replied. "There is no difference between the two examples other than congress can get away with it. Here is what I have proposed to fix the Social Security over the last few years..."

Wow a congressman who admits how bad congress has been with our money. Congressman Chaffetz received my vote at the State Convention. Nice work congressman Chaffetz.

Sunday Shoes

As young teenagers, my two brothers and I would go out late at night during the winter and use our Sunday dress shoes to slide down the mountain. After just a few short weeks, we realized that we could also slide down the mountain to the school, so we started taking our Sunday shoes to school. We would change when we reached the point where our mom could no longer see us, then we would slide all the way down the hill. As you can imagine, our shoes wore out pretty quick. Our mom noticed that our shoes were looking terrible and asked why. We all shrugged our shoulders and acted like we knew nothing. But then when she saw a pair laying by the front door with a hole in the sole she was beside herself. She yelled our names and sat us unceremoniously on the couch and let us have it until we confessed. We had to work several extra jobs to pay for buying new shoes after just a few months of ownership.

The Mouse Story

After a long day at work, I headed for some meetings at church which was not unusual during this particular period of our life. My wife was quite used to "manning" the house by herself on a regular basis. On this particular night, there were about 15 people, and I was in charge of this particular meeting. I believe we had been going about 20 minutes when my cell phone began to ring. At first I ignored it, but it continued to ring(vibrate) and so I finally decided I had better check and see who it was. I looked and saw that it was my wife. Fearing that something had happened to one of my children, I asked to be excused and stepped out into the hallway and called home. My son Derek answered the phone and all I could hear was screaming. High-pitched screams. Immediately I thought the worst, someone had broken into the house and was killing my family. I finally got Derek to put his mother on the phone.
"Jan, what is going on? Is everyone Okay?"
"No! Everything is not okay!" (Sobs)
"Honey what is wrong?" (more sobs, screaming in the background followed by a loud thump and then more screaming)
"Dave you need to come home right now!"
I quickly hung up the phone, stepped back into the room and let everyone know I would return and asked my friend Steve Daily to continue the meeting.
I drove home, about a 5 minute drive with all sorts of thoughts going through my head. I ran into the house and my daughter Jaimie was sitting on the table with Derek and Dallin, as I rounded the corner into the kitchen, there was my sweet wife holding a large plastic cup and screaming to the top of her lungs as a mouse jumped from the counter into the sink of dirty dishes.
When my wife saw me, she dropped the cup and buried her face into my shoulder.
"Are you okay?"
"No I am not okay, I was doing dishes when a mouse jumped onto the counter and I grabbed a cup and smashed the mouse, I screamed to the top of my lungs and threw the cup because it made the most horrific sound, that caused the kids to start to yell and scream. Then another mouse jumped onto the counter in the exact same place, and it is in the sink!"
I took the plastic cup and began searching calmly through the sink and soon found the tiny mouse and lightly smashed it and picked it up by the tail and took both dead mice out to the garage and deposited them into the garbage can. Gave my wife and kids a hug, and laughed all the way back to church. The entire group lost it when I told them why I had to go home. My wife was not happy with me to find out that I had told the entire leadership of our church what a terrible housekeeper she was and that come Sunday, the entire church was going to know that we had mice! By the way, for those who haven't been to my house, Jan likes it clean. she was mortified.
Needless to say, I found the hole where the mice were accessing the kitchen from the crawlspace and put foam with cayenne pepper to keep them out.
The moral of the story is not to ignore your sweetheart when the phone rings, she and the children could quite possibly be traumatized for life!

The Fly

As an Air Traffic Controller at Hill Air Force base. I worked up in the 135 tall tower. On occasion when the F-16's would be out flying, the tower would have an extra visitor. On this particular day it was Captain Maxwell whose call sign is "Slap". Captain Maxwell was what we lovingly called the SOF (Supervisor of flying) what a great name. I was working the local control position (The guy who talks to the airplanes in the air and clears them for takeoff and landing) and a fly kept hitting me on the side of my head. It was very annoying, so when the air traffic died down a bit, I turned my attention to catching the fly. Mind you, I was at the time a Senior Airman, meaning I was enlisted and only two steps above the lowest pay grade in the military. I saw the fly land on the SOF's desk, so I approached the desk and caught the fly in my right hand. As I turned to walk back over to my position, captain Maxwell said.
"You didn't get him."
I responded.
"Yes I did sir."
He responded.
"Prove it."
I said.
"Open your mouth." not the smartest thing I have ever said.
Captain Maxwell opened his mouth and I quickly threw the fly into his mouth. It went part way down his throat and he coughed and sputter and choked to get it out.
Master Sargent Gerald Battle turned and saw the Captain choking unaware of the fly incident. The Captain pointed his finger at me and said.
"He threw a fly into my mouth!"
Sargent Battle looked at me with horror in his eyes.
"He did what!?"
Captain Maxwell pointed at me again.
"He threw a fly into my mouth!"
Sargent Battle asked me to explain myself and to do so quickly.
I told him what had happened, he chuckled and turned to the Captain.
"Well Captain, if Airman Maughan says he has the fly, he has the fly."

When I arrived home I told my wife about the experience, she was fearful I would be busted or court marshalled. So when she went to work that night at the hospital in the lab, she spoke to the wife of the 388th commander who worked with her and told her what had happened. Well the commanders wife told her husband and he went in early and changed all the call signs on Captain Maxwell's uniform, locker and helmet.
When Captain Maxwell walked into the locker room to dress for his flight, all of the pilots and support people were watching to see his reaction. He couldn't believe what he was seeing. there on his uniform, helmet and locker it read.
"Venus"
About 15 minutes later I got a call at the tower, Sargent Battle said it was for me. It was Captain Maxwell.

"Is this Airman Basic Maughan?"
My heart dropped, and my mind flashed to my family and how we were going to survive on Airman Basic pay. Then he said.
"I'm just kidding, do you know what they did?"
"No sir."
"Well, they changed my callsign to Venus!"
"I am sorry I threw that fly into your mouth sir. I promise I won't do anything that stupid again."
"Nonsense, I'm the one who didn't believe you had caught the fly and I opened my mouth. no harm done."
I vowed never to do anything so stupid again.

You just wait until your father gets home!

1972 was a great year. A gallon of gasoline cost $.55. To conserve gas, my three siblings would walk home from where the school bus dropped us off approximately 3 miles from our home. We lived on a small farm just two miles downstream from the Hanford Nuclear power plant on a 35 acre hay farm with 4-5 acres of fruit trees and an acre garden. Yes, an acre garden, and yes we do glow at night because of the radium leaks from 1970-73. Our dad built a nice beach for us to swim in once the chores were done. Most of our days during the summer were spent in the garden where we would each weed our obligatory assigned rows. 

On this particular day, our dad was away on business, trying to buy a real estate agency in Missoula Montana. We had been out of school for several weeks for the summer vacation. My older brother Mark and I were supposed to be changing the pipe, but we decided it would be more fun for kids our age to play "chase the rabbit". 

This fun game consisted of chasing a cottontail rabbit into a sprinkler pipe, then lifting that pipe high into the air and causing the rabbit to slide all the way down the pipe. You could hear its nails digging into the inside of the pipe as it helplessly slid all the way to the end. Then it would take off again and we would chase it. Way too much fun. The time went by pretty fast and soon we see our mother and our younger brother Doug walking towards us. Our mom says, just get out of here. So we did, we took off heading towards the nearest farm which was about 3 miles away. We hitched a ride with the neighbor into Pasco which was about 20 miles away from Columbia Basin. We rode around with the neighbor who had a son our age. When night came, we acted like we were going home, but instead sneaked into the neighbors barn and slept soundly all night. The next morning, we decided we had better head for home. So we played our way home in the foothills that run along the Columbia river.  As we got closer to home we could see several boats, and 30-40 people walking towards us. The sheriff and a few deputies took us down to the road and put us into their car. They drove us the rest of the way home. When we walked into the yard, our mom met us with tears in her eyes and gave each of us a hug, then whispered loudly in our ears. 

"You just wait until your father gets home!"

We never felt so bad when we found out that she had searched all night, and had called out the local church members as well as the police to search for us. They were dredging the river and searching through the hills above our home. We never pulled a stunt like that again.

Wrong Car

Yesterday morning I drove over to my friends house to pick him up for work. I pulled into the driveway and out of the door comes a running his 9 year old daughter Mariah, she pulls open the back door and breathlessly says.
"Sorry I am running a bit late this morning." Then she looks at me and her eyes get really big as I say
"Good morning Mariah, where am I taking you this morning."
She gives me that mortified look, says nothing as she climbs out of the car, slams the door emphatically and runs back into the house. Moments later, her father Charles comes walking out of the house oblivious to the recent encounter. I asked him if Mariah was okay, he asked why? I told him and we laughed most of the way to work.

Yelling

Being one of ten children, it was sometimes clear that mom and dad could not show enough attention to each child, so I would act out and sure enough, I would get yelled at and then I would know that I was still loved and alive.