Time is Money

Well maybe not but, as I grow older, it seems that my time keeps getting more and more precious to me. It's not that I'm doing anything important with my time, it's just that I don't want to waste any of it doing something that I'm not very interested in. Of course I've heard of the Kochs, and I've heard of PACs, but I don't know which PACs are Koch PACs, and I don't care. The story about the secret memo might very well be true, but I don't care about it enough to spend any time or energy tracking down the evidence. I just thought it was funny to hear your ilk speaking in hushed tones about some secret conspiracy. I thought it was my ilk's job to do things like that. I don't pay much attention to my ilk anymore either so, for all I know, they're still doing it.

Funny that you get outraged when the Reps do something but don't mind so much if the Dems do the same thing. I'm just the opposite. I expect the Democrats to raise my taxes, that's what Democrats do, but when the Republicans raise my taxes, that pisses me off. In my world, the Republicans are supposed to be the good guys. Of course they're not, which is why I voted for third parties for decades, but I eventually got disenchanted with them too, and somebody should be the good guys.

The more I think about it, I think you're right, it was Cortez who conquered the Aztecs, and it was Pizzaro who conquered the Incas. I'm more familiar with the Inca story, but I'm sure the Aztec story wasn't all that different. When the first Europeans came to the Americas, there weren't many of them, so they formed alliances with the local tribes. The tribes were happy to have the help fighting off their enemies, and the Europeans were happy to establish a foothold. Once their mutual enemies were neutralized, the alliances usually fell apart but, by then, more Europeans had arrived and the foothold was expanded into a thriving colony, eventually pushing the locals out of the picture. The British did it a little different in India. There they kept some of local leaders around and supported them in puppet governments. Each local satrap would have a British "advisor" assigned to "help" him govern. They tried something like that with the Zulus in South Africa, but the Zulus were not as easily advised as the Asian Indians, and the British had to fight a bloody war to put them in their place.

I know you find this hard to believe, but not all poor Americans are Black. We've got lots of poor people in lily white Cheboygan, although they're not as poor as they used to be before I moved here. The story I heard was that, once the Blacks started signing up for welfare, it inspired our local Whites to do likewise. At first out local government resisted them, not wanting to bother with the paperwork, but eventually they realized that the increased workload justified hiring more staff, which justified a bigger budget, which justified applying for more state and federal grants. Maybe time really is money after all!

I never thought of myself as a contrarian, I just don't follow the crowd. If the crowd wants to follow me, I don't have a problem with that but, if I turn around and see that they're not following me, I just keep going. I think I would have liked Morgan Park because I used to like military stuff in those days. It wasn't until I got into the real military that I began to dislike it, and then it was largely because they weren't military enough for my taste. I don't know about that thing at the university. It was experimental anyway, and I never heard anything more about it, so it was probably a flop. I don't think either one of them would have caused me to change my plans. At the of seven I resolved to move to the country when I grew up, and that's exactly what I did.

I did some looking up over the weekend. My preliminary findings suggest that the number of Indians in Cheboygan and Emmet counties is closer to 10% than 4%, but I haven't been able to find anything conclusive yet. That U.P tribe is actually headquartered in Sault St. Marie, not St. Ignace. They have about 40,000 enrolled members spread out over seven counties. I conservatively estimate that at least 10% of them are in our two counties, which would give us 4,000 Indians right there. The other tribe is much smaller, with over 4,000 members, but they are only spread over two counties, one of which is not in our study area. Their headquarters is in Petoskey, which is in Emmet, so it seems reasonable to assume that at least half of their members live in Emmet County. That would raise our number to 6,000, which is 10%. Then there's those traditionalists I told you about. They are not a federally recognized tribe, but they beat on their drums and pray to the Great Spirit, so I think they are real Indians. I don't know how you would count them, but my daughter might still know somebody who's in it, and I'm going to see her on Mother's day. Watch this space for further developments.