My View

Random ruminations from your resident curmudgeon...

A new year is upon us and it is time to welcome a new dog for these posts. I thought this dog was appropriate for the blog as he expresses his suspicions over the status quo.

And that is a good mantra for all of us as we enter 2015.

Be wary.

A fragile economy, a news media that spins the news, and political parties that will tell us one thing while doing another requires that we must be constantly on our guard.

Now before any of you think I have slipped into the land of conspiracy theorists, let me just say that hasn't happened.

But as we embark upon a new year, we would all be wise to have a healthy dose of "prove it" when given news from the mainstream media or data from our government.

Take today's jobs numbers that were reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. While heralded as being "good", further examination reveals that the majority of the jobs added to the economy are in low wage service sectors. The jobs our economy is creating are not high quality jobs, yet we are thrilled to be creating more entry level jobs than high wage, high skilled jobs.

All of us have a responsibility to dig deeper and get to the truth. The mainstream media will not report it. The government will obfuscate it.

The responsibility is ours to get to the facts and then to make our own reasoned decisions.

I hope you will do this with this blog as well.

As this year unfolds, we will be looking at a lot of issues, some economic, some social, all controversial.

It's going to be a fun ride.

And I will not take your chocolate.

And that, my friends, is my view.