Monthly Archives: May 2014

Social Security Private Accounts

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There was a commentary posted February 1, 2012 about George W. Bush’s proposal to allow young people to voluntarily invest a third of their Social Security “contributions” into private accounts. That was successfully vilified as a proposal to “privatize Social Security.” The attacks were based on the lie that the proposal would reduce monthly payments to people already receiving benefits. Older people are dependable voters, and politicians scrapped an idea that would have been wonderful for younger workers.

I wrote in the earlier commentary what would have happened if the proposal had been passed by Congress. Workers could have put the proposed one third or their Social Security “contributions” into a private account invested in an S&P 500 index fund beginning in 2005. There is no doubt 2008 was a scary year for investors. Workers earning $50,000/year would have invested about $8300 into their private account from when the change was proposed. That investment would have dropped in value to about $5700 at the low point of the financial crisis. That would scare anyone! However, what would have happened if the hypothetical investor had the guts to continue to invest two percent of their $50,000 earnings as the market dropped and beyond? The monthly “dollar averaging” investments would have bought more shares in the S&P 500 index fund, and that would have had a powerful effect on the current value of the account.   Continue reading →

Russians, The People Behind the Power

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Russians I found Gregory Feifer’s book depressing. “The vast majority of Russians will continue to endure the grinding bureaucracy… [G]overnment repression, waste, shoddiness and corruption remain prominent.” Between the oligarchs and the vast majority there is a “jarring contrast between extravagance and the heart-wrenching shabbiness of the great unwashed.” Westerners who try to do business through the visible government structure are disappointed because the real power is hidden in traditional cronyism, corruption, and bribery.
Feifer says he is pessimistic that Russia will “Westernize”. He asks: “Have they learned nothing from their painful past?” They don’t seem to; Russia has a “political culture that has shaped the country’s history for centuries.”
Feifer covers tsarist, Soviet, and recent history, including the history of St. Petersburg and Moscow. (Being a Russian peasant has always been a misery.) World War II is still prominent in Russian thinking: while seventy years of Soviet rule killed as many as 20 million people directly through execution and imprisonment, or through state-orchestrated famines; WWII killed 30 million in a few years, including 40% of men aged twenty to forty-nine. Continue reading →

Getting Off the Snide

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I recently heard a sports announcer for the Colorado Rockies mention that the team had “gotten off the snide” after scoring a run to end a 23 inning scoreless streak. Alpha Dictionary says no clear origin can be found for the expression. However, a response to a question on the site mentions that “snide” is a variant of “schneid and schneider.” Both terms are used in gin rummy to describe “…where one side has failed to score for an extended period.” Wordpress.com further explains that “schneid” entered the vocabulary of gin players from the German word for “tailor.” If “…you were schneidered” in gin you were “cut” (as if by a tailor).”

Supreme Court Criminal Trial after a Lynching

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I’m often given a stack of legal magazines while visiting our son and his family, and one article that I’ve saved is titled, “A Supreme Case of Contempt” by Mark Curriden published in the June 2009 ABA Journal. You can tell by the date that it took a considerable time before I could post something about this incredibly sad and disturbing story. The article tells the remarkable story of United States v. Shipp. It was the first and only criminal trial in the history of the Supreme Court. There were nine defendants, and all were charged with contempt of the Supreme Court. The U.S. Attorney had filed the charges directly with the court, which gave it “…original jurisdiction in the matter.” The charges alleged that the defendants engaged in action “…with the intent to show their contempt and disregard for the orders of this honorable court…and for the purpose of preventing Ed Johnson from exercising and enjoying a right secured to him by the Constitution and laws of the United States.” Ed Johnson was a young black man convicted of raping a white woman despite ample evidence he was innocent. He was lynched after police officials stood aside to allow him to be taken by a mob.

The story begins with a 21 year old white woman named Nevada Taylor who was on her way to work in Chattanooga, TN on January 23, 1906. An assailant approached her from behind, put a leather strap around her neck, threatened to kill her if she screamed, and raped her. She ran home and her father called Hamilton County Sherriff Joseph F. Shipp to report the crime. The newspaper report of the “fiendish crime” said that Taylor had not seen the assailant. The report described the assailant as a “Negro brute.” There was a $375 reward announced for anyone who could identify the attacker. A white man named Will Hixxon read about the reward and said he had seen Ed Johnson, a young black man, carrying a leather strap near the scene of the crime about the time it had occurred. Shipp arrested Johnson, who maintained his innocence during a three hour interrogation. Johnson said he had been in a saloon and gave names of a dozen men who could vouch for his story. Continue reading →

Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind

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Future of the MindAuthor Michio Kaku is well known for his books and television popularizing science. He has recently tackled brain research.  His current book, The Future of the Mind, includes popular touches such as references to movies and TV and stories from his own life (wow, he was tough competition in high school science fairs!). The book has been on the New York Times best-seller list, and I thought it was a readable, well-prepared effort; I have watched some of Kaku’s TV shows and in places in the book I can hear his voice in my head as I read.  But somehow this book didn’t completely grab me.  I skimmed through some of the sections, but since the chapters can stand-alone, that worked well for me.

future Michio_Kaku_in_2012

Dr. Kaku

Kaku mentions Phineas Gage, whose accident in 1848 marked “the origins of modern neuroscience.”  When dynamite powder he was tamping down exploded, a metal rod rocketed completely through his head leaving behind massive brain damage, but Gage survived.  Kaku mentions the standard story that Gage’s personality was changed much for the worse by his accident. By coincidence, I found an article in Slate.com that says this standard story may be wrong, that the tale of his changed personality comes from a single, vague report immediately after the accident, and his subsequent life demonstrates he recovered to a remarkable extent.  But whatever the truth abut Gage, Kaku’s point remains: “it would alter the course of science.”  Continue reading →

New York Minute

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The Urban Dictionary explains that a “…New York minute is an instant…Johnny Carson once said, ‘It’s the interval between a Manhattan traffic light turning green and the guy behind you honking his horn’.” It apparently originated in Texas sometime around 1967 and refers to “…the frenzied and hectic pace of New Yorker’s lives. A New Yorker does in an instant what a Texan would take a minute to do.”