The U.S. House and it's silly punishments

Representative Charles B. Rangel was censured by The House because of some unethical conduct. He was chairman of the Ways and Means Committee which is heavily involved in writing tax law. His unethical behavior included things like, attending conferences in the Caribbean payed for by corporations, not paying taxes on $75,000 of income from rental properties, not paying mortgage interest for 10 years, and using his office for fundraising activities for the Charlie P. Rangel Center for Public Service including seeking donations from companies that had business before his ways and means committee. In total there were 11 charges he was found guilty on.

From the way he speaks in defense of himself it sounds like he thinks this is all an overreaction and nothing should happen to him, and that his service in the military should count for something. It is clear that he committed these crimes and should be punished for them.

So here's the houses punishment. A censure. A censure is a very serious punishment and is rarely used. It entails his charges being read by the speaker of the house in front of the entire house of representatives (Though from what I've heard she only read one charge). Can you believe the severity! Can you believe people are debating the death penalty and all the while something as horrific as censure is going on!

This is a joke. They could easily remove this guy from office and even put him in prison (I believe Wesley Snipes just got put in prison for not paying taxes). Instead the house basically decided not to do anything. He even got standing applause after he gave his defense.

Miller's Justice - Throw him out of office and put him in prison for 2 years. Throw anyone who applauded him out of office. Revoke voting rights from the people in New York that re-elected him despite the charges until they have taken some basic courses on ethics and how to do some research before casting a vote.

More Creativity

Here's a couple creative people and what they did:

Matt Moman works in the plastic flower business. At a trade show he saw a bunch of lemons and limes that looked very real. A few days later he is sipping a beer and an idea hits him so he went for it. He used the fake limes to create a bottle opener with a magnet inside so it sticks to the fridge. Once the product is ready to go he then pitches it to Grupo Modelo (the company behind Corona beer) and they loved it. This cool little bottle opener is now going to make millions for him and the beer company, all from a simple idea that he decided to go for.

Mary Zeiff was a 1st grade teacher. She was frustrated by all the negative T-shirts she would see her students wearing ("Spoiled Brat" or "I'm with stupid"). She was sure these were not the kind of things happy kids are thinking. So she created her own shirts. She asked her students what they would put on a shirt and they came up with things like "First grade rocks!" and "I love mommy!". Well the shirts have taken off and the concept has grown. Through her website kids can submit their shirt designs and customers vote on their favorites. Winners get their shirt added to the inventory and they get 3% of the profits from the shirt, another 3% then goes to a charity of the designer's choice. Very cool idea and what an awesome thing for young kids to participate in. You can check out the website here.

I got these two stories from Entrepreneur magazine.

Have you heard anything creative lately?

Why Announce it?

So Ricky Martin has announced to the world that he is gay. The big question for me is why the announcement? Why is it important for everyone to know that? The only reason I can come up with is he needed a career boost. So far it seems to have been effective, over the last week I think I have heard "Livin la vida loca" on the radio 5 times.

The even bigger question is why do gay or lesbian people feel the need to make a dramatic announcement about their sexuality. I'm not saying they all do but there seems to be a segment that really needs to tell people.

Do you guys have any thoughts on this? Should those of us that are straight start putting stickers on our cars that say so? Or when a straight celebrity wins an award should they declare in their acceptance speech that they are heterosexual?