[Editor’s Note: Is there a question here? I’m

I was at an event recently where a manufacturing plant executive told me they quit drug testing as a pre-condition of employment. Why? It’s harder to _nd employees than ever before. They don’t need an extra barrier to hiring.

[Editor’s Note: I’m actually expecting drug testing by one’s employer to eventually be deemed illegal as a violation of one’s personal rights or whatever, especially as more and more states decriminalize marijuana. I mean, you don’t test for alcohol use, right? I assume it will be something along the lines of you can drink while off the job but you can’t come to work drunk, so you can use drugs while off the job but you can’t come to work high. I’m not saying it’s a good idea. I’m just saying that seems to be where we are headed …] Most of us grew up with the idea that we would vote on the _rst Tuesday following the _rst Monday in November at a speci_c location. That law was passed by Congress in 1845 and even though early voting options (absentee) have been in use for quite a while the vast majority of Americans who voted (more than 90 percent) tended to do so on Election Day. In the 1990s, that began to change and those changes have accelerated of late. Is that good, bad or indifferent? Fans will tell you that early voting brings out more voters. Critics will tell you it opens the door to fraud. All I know is that growing up we usually had results election night. Now, despite technological advances, results often take longer and the whole process went from simple too confusing – all in the name of lowering the bar for voting.

actually all for doing whatever it takes to a) get people to vote, and b) make sure every vote gets counted no matter how long it takes. I mean, do we “need” to know who won the elections in just a few hours? We’ve got this “instant grati_cation” mentality now thanks to the internet. And remember “fast” isn’t always “right” – anyone remember “Dewey Defeats Truman” from social studies class?] I know I sound like the grumpy old man … I am! The thing is we used to live in a country that had standards that encouraged us to set high goals and work hard to achieve them. Remember JFK’s moon speech where he set a goal that we didn’t even have the technology to pull off? But pull it off we did. In sports, good coaches raised expectations and standards. They never lowered them. It’s a valuable lesson that sometimes in life you lose… and you need to learn how to handle that. We are no longer learning that if you want something work for it! We learning that if you want something you whine about how unfair things are and wait for someone to give it to you! Before anyone gets offended, this has nothing to do with discrimination of any sort – race, gender, creed, orientation, etc. Discrimination in whatever form it manifests itself is wrong. Capital W-R-O-N-G. But we’ve taken the concept and blown it out of proportion. Now, if an unjust act occurs we rush to change the rules so we can crush it out of existence and never, ever let it happen again. [Editor’s Note: There’s a lot of truth to what you say, but let’s not pretend that we have achieved a level playing _eld in our society]