About the Author, Robert S. Barnett: Resumes and Bios

What does one say about someone who decides at the age of eight that he has to leave home, having concluded that either his mother was going to kill him or he was going to kill her? At that age I realize I needed to find someplace else to live or face drastic consequences. From the very start, life has given me the challenges from which I know and understands the stress and the strain of the average, good worker trying to make ends meet.

Fortunately, a summer of being at the beck and call of my mother's grandmother resulted in her accepting my request to live with her ... but. But I had to pay all my bills. She lived on a $105 a month from social security and military death benefits. To meet my expenses, I worked 40-50 hours a week shining shoes, delivering papers, hauling cinders and mowing lawns. To match the store-bought food, I raised and canned vegetables. In retrospect, I worked more hours and planted more than was needed. If economics begins at home, as its Greek origin implies, I early on understood home management.

If there was one thing that made my mother difficult to live with, it was public assistance. I know that public assistance without requirements to be responsible and requirements to avoid self-destructiveness is really not help. I know a woman who has spent her life on public assistance because she was rewarded with more income each time she became pregnant. In nine years she had eight kids. She would have had more pregnancies except for a court-ordered sterilization. Her reward for her freedom from responsibility? Children left and never looked back. At the 1997 funeral of one child were children who had not seen her for 15, 20 and 32 years, yet living in or visiting often the town where she lived. A bill of responsibility would have given her more out of life, quality rather than quantity. Public assistance creates unhappy people. Absolute public assistance metasizes absolutely unhappy people.

I shined shoes until age 14 when the catcalls of my fellow students prompted me to stop. Time and money spent getting work permits were met with closed doors. The depletion of my savings prompted drastic action. I became a break and grab burglar of liquor stores. In 30 seconds or less I was out the door with two cases of hard liquor to sell to fellow students. This lasted only until I found a job four months later. I showed my appreciation of my catcallers by not only selling them licker for their parties but offering to bring some freebies if they invited me. Poetic justice was giving the time and location of the party to the police. Cold. Of course, no good deed goes unpunished. From my ill-gotten proceeds, I purchased a motorcycle which I drove without a license for over a year until stopped and arrested the week before my 16th birthday. My lasting impression: Kids break the law from need or want if not allowed to work.

Frying hamburgers 40-50 hours per week through highschool left little time for friends or study. Did poorly in both areas. Graduated in the middle of my class.

In the Navy, I completed electronics school 2nd in my class of 50 with the highest score ever on the final exam in which 90% failed it. After the military, I entered Southern Illinois University with a state military scholarship and the GI Bill. Quickly, I completed the requirements cum laude in two years. One grading period, I  Ace'd 24 hours. Completed a nine-month organic chemistry course in two-month. The origin of timism was in undergraduate school where I studied a wide range of subjects quickly with the luck of discovering a table into which I could generalize and organize the information. Little did I realize the import of timism until I spent a year  in the early 1980's researching and writing a tome on timism which I burned up.

Graduate school was not as enjoyable as UG. My experience was summarized in the sign that a faculty member had on his door: "Graduate students are slaves who should not forget their station in life." After receiving a Masters and completing the doctoral coursework, I decided not to do a dissertation. Academia was too political. One of the limits of my adolescent loner lifestyle was never learning that all human organization are too political. This is part of my motivation to define and implement better democracy though the keyboard and internet, for neither know the sex, religion or race of the surfer. The keyboard has no hidden agenda.

After graduate school I drifted until I found the calling of telling the world that we need better democracy and capitalism. This part of my life is covered in the history of Better Democracy and Capitalism. Either I am tilting at windmills or I have found the something.

My goals are simple. I would liked to see a Lincoln penny picked up because it is worth something (currency reform). I would liked to see more children going down the street with happy parents (24 in 4). I'd liked to see an end to habitual politicians (colfilperhone). As said elsewhere and elsetime, holding public office or being liked is unimportant to me compared to solving problems. I am the doctor with the cod liver oil who is going to keep you from killing yourself if you can stomach the medicine. And, I hate being treated as a second class anything except when I am second class or worse. While I pride myself on my biological cerebral gift, I know that I am God's gift only to myself.

Mottos: Those who travel alone travel faster ... Individuals define and committees refine.

A variation of this can be found in 24 in 4, About the Author.