My New Rule Of Thumb

I am a gambler at heart. Not to say that I go to casinos or place sports bets or anything like that. Living, as I do, in central Alabama that would require more effort than I am willing to expend. Even buying a lottery ticket requires a tank of gas and 5 hours driving. No, when I say I am a gambler I mean a risk-taker. But more importantly, I am a risk observer (i.e. a handicapper). Some things like a bet on a roulette wheel have high odds against the player. I know that and I don't do. Other things like buying a lottery ticket are even higher risk, but everytime I go to Georgia or Tennessee I pick one up. I like the day dreaming that goes along with the ever so slight possibility of winning. Things, like betting the sun will come up, are pretty much a sure thing. These “pretty much sure things” enable us all to come up with rules of thumb to simplify our lives. In the case of the sunrise, most everyone observes that and acts accordingly. My sunrise rule of thumb is the same as everyone else’s’, “It’s gonna happen, count on it.” My rule of thumb for roulette is: “It ain’t likely, don’t mess with it.” And my rule for lottery tickets is “it’s damn near impossible but pick one up anyway and day dream until after the drawing.”

Lately I have been working on a new rule of thumb. It involves something that is not as certain as the sunrise but looks to me to be close. My new rule of thumb is: "If the government does it, I am against it." With government understood to mean city, county or parish, state and federal.

Now I know that a lot of you are already thinking, yeah but what about roads, what about police, what about fire protection, what about ______ (fill in the blank with the one thing you think some branch of government does that you can’t live without). Well first let me say that this is a rule of thumb. Not fool proof, just works MOST of the time. Second let me say that I am fairly certain that roads and police and fire protection could be provided with no assistance from the aforementioned governments if we just had the desire and fortitude to try. As for the thing you put in the blank, I leave that to you. Can you figure out a way that it could be done without the government? If not, it is an exception to the rule.

So there it is my new rule of thumb. "If the government does it, I am against it." Its not guaranteed to be 100 percent accurate but it seems to work for me the majority of the time.