Social Security Projections

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The U.S. deficit continues to grow out of control, and there should have been actions taken to address the problem long before now. However, President Obama’s comments that the deficit is not a short term problem indicates to me we won’t do anything about the deficit for the next four years. Much of the problem is caused by “entitlement” commitments, and President Obama said in his inaugural address that he has no intention of doing anything about those either.

I’m baffled how the American people and the media are going along with the “don’t worry, be happy” approach. Looking at Social Security alone is frightening. A recent article by Chuck Saletta on the Motley Fool points out that each new analysis finds that the program will reach “financial unsustainability” sooner than the previous analyses. The Social Security Trustees reported in 2008 that problems would not be encountered until 2041. The date has now changed to 2033, and that is going to continue to move closer.

Money taken from employees and employers is invested in bonds, and bonds that mature must be replaced with new ones. The older bonds were yielding much more in interest than the ones currently available. The program is projected to earn $5.4 billion less in bond interest in 2012. The fact the Federal Reserve has recently said they are going to artificially keep interest rates low until the unemployment rate begins to drop means the revenue is not going to improve. Continue reading →

Looming Demographic Disaster

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The first paragraph in an article authored by Bill Frezza is disconcerting, to understate the level of concern it should cause. “If demography is destiny, democracy is toast-at least those democracies where citizens can vote themselves a living at someone else’s expense. It doesn’t take a mathematical genius to see that governments’ addiction to intergenerational income redistribution is not sustainable unless someone keeps supplying babies at an accelerating pace.”  The last sentence of the article is, “The problem with entitlement democracy is that you eventually run out of other people’s babies.” (I’m guessing this is a slight theft of Margret Thatcher’s famous quote that, “The problem with Socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.)

The gist of the article is that we are facing a self-imposed financial disaster. “The root cause of the economic disaster that lies ahead is the kamikaze drive of democratic governments to displace the functions of the family, including the care of relatives in their old age.” Continue reading →

Cloud Nine

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It is universally accepted that the expression means that someone is blissfully happy, but there are debates about the origin. Askville writes that it was popularized by the Johnny Dollar radio show in the 1950s when the “…hero was knocked unconscious and transported to Cloud Nine.” Many think, or have thought, that the origin was the U.S. Weather Bureau which rates Level Nine as the very highest cumulonimbus clouds. Another theory is that it is derived from Buddhism in which “In the ninth stage the seeker reaches when all his acts are unselfish…” Then there is Dante’s Paradise in which the ninth level of heaven is the closest to the Divine Presence. If that doesn’t confuse you sufficiently, contemplate that the number nine turns up in other expressions with disputed origins such as “dressed to the nines” and “the whole nine yards.” Is searching for origins fun, frustrating, or interesting?

Truman

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trumanThis book written by David McCullough is absolutely amazing. My wife had been telling me for years that it was something I would completely enjoy, but I had put off reading it because of the 992 pages. I learned that she was right when I finally got around to reading the book.

I understand the book rejuvenated the reputation of President Harry S. Truman after he left the presidency in near disgrace with an approval rating in the low twenty percent range because of the general disapproval (disgust) for the Korean War. I wrote a personal review of the book that had in excess of twenty-five pages, which should be a good indication of what I thought about the book. I promise to maintain my pledge to hold reviews on this site to two pages.

The Amazon selection for the most useful positive and less positive reviews is a good place to start. For the first category, it says in part, “For most of the 1,000 or so pages it read like a novel, a real page turner…” A three star review says, “While it is OK for a historian to like the subject of a biography, he should not love him. David McCullough likes Harry Truman a bit too much.”

I need to add that I began reading this lengthy biography with a personal bias. My father was an ardent Roosevelt Democrat, and he said on many occasions that Truman was one of the greatest presidents. I was fascinated with that assessment in my youth when I was struggling with understanding anything at all about politics, mostly because my Dad seldom if ever said anything like that about FDR. Why, I asked myself, would my Dad love FDR, but would so frequently talk about Truman being a great president. This book answers that question. Ann Coulter also answers that question in one of her books. She is critical of every Democrat president. She says of Truman that he was wrong about many of his policies, “But there is no doubt he loved his country.” Continue reading →

Green with Envy

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Yahoo Answers has an explanation that the “…Greeks believed that jealously was accompanied by an overproduction of bile, lending a yellowish-green pallor to the victim’s complexion.” A seventh century B.C. poetess described the face of a stricken lover as green. Shakespeare’s Othello mentioned that jealously “…is the green-ey’d monster…”

PT 109

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pt109This famous book was written by Robert J. Donovan, and I happened upon the fortieth anniversary edition in the library. The first two sentences of the front cover convinced me I should read it. “In the early morning darkness of August 2, 1943, in the waters of Blackett Strait in the Solomon Islands, the Japanese destroyer Amagiri (Japanese for “Heavenly Mist) sliced an American PT boat in two, leaving its crew for dead in a flaming sea. The boat’s skipper was a gaunt, boyish lieutenant from Boson named John Fitzgerald Kennedy.”

I found myself having difficulty remaining interested in the somewhat lengthy Foreword, Prefaces, and even the early chapters of the book. I’m certain they contributed to setting up for the easy to read and interesting parts of the book. The early chapters certainly made it clear that JFK’s experiences were similar to those of most sailors and soldiers who were in the South Pacific in World War II. There were the easygoing days, weeks, and months of training, watching, waiting, and being bored while trying to make an uncomfortable life more bearable. All of that certainly came to an end as JFK and his PT boat were assigned to a forward position. “For months war had seemed comfortably distant most of the time. Now the air was heavy with it. Uneasiness and fear lay just below the surface everywhere.”

Any doubt JFK had about why he and his comrades were in the South Pacific would have been eliminated when he say a large billboard on a hillside that had been ordered to be installed by Admiral William R. Halsey. It said:

Kill Japs. Kill Japs.
Kill More Japs.
You will help to kill the yellow
bastards if you do your job well.

Continue reading →