Beware of Pension Predators

Posted on by

There is valuable information in an article by Marsha Mercer for retirees struggling to pay their living expenses. Many didn’t save enough for retirement and some who did save and invest were driven from the stock market with heart-breaking losses during the financial crisis. Many of those didn’t get back in the market, which would have resulted in them recovering the losses. They probably instead put their money in “safe investments”, such as insured certificates of deposit (CDs). The Federal Reserve policies have driven those kinds of investments to paying interest rates that are below the rate of inflation. Putting money in a CD or similar relatively safe instruments at this moment in time is like saying to the banker, “Take my money and give me almost all of it back when the certificate matures.” The result is that many retirees are looking for ways to pay monthly expenses without the help of income from investments.

There have been a slew of ads on television targeting retirees.  The ads tell people they don’t have to wait to get their money from retirement programs or structured settlements.  Mercer’s article warns against jumping at those offers. It describes a retiree beset by bills that “…arranged to get a cash advance in exchange for signing over most of his $1,083 monthly pension for eight years.” He agreed to pay $1,070 a month in return for money up front. The cost for the $42,131 cash advance was $102,720. He was named the lead plaintiff in a suit against the company and the judge ordered all the people could stop making payments and that the retirees would be repaid nearly $3 million. The company declared bankruptcy and none of the victims were paid anything. Continue reading →

The Samson Option

Posted on by

samson-optionThis is a fascinating book by Seymour M. Hersh. As suggested by the subtitle, “Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy,” the book is split between describing how Israel developed nuclear weapons and a succession of American Presidents mostly turning a blind eye toward what Israel was doing. Some of the information is astonishing, and I often wondered whether the information was fact or fiction. There seems to have been a significant amount of research in the form of interviews with Israelis and Americans who could have known the secrets that are discussed. My inclination is to present the book as factual, and that is mostly because that would make the book more interesting!

The story begins with a description of how the U.S. shared high resolution images from a spy satellite called the “KH-11.” It seems a bit odd that the Israelis supposedly promised not to use the images for military purposes but used them to develop targets in the Soviet Union. They also used them to target and destroy the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak twelve miles north of Baghdad in early June 1981. The bombing raid was accomplished with F-16s that had been purchased from the U.S. “for defensive purposes only.” The bombing brought about worldwide protest and was the first Middle East crises for the Reagan administration. President Reagan asked his national security advisor, Richard Allen why the Israelis had bombed the facility and was told “Well. Boys will be boys.” The real answer was that Menachem Begin had said that it was necessary to prevent Iraq from developing a nuclear weapon. He said Iraq having nuclear weapons would result in “another Holocaust.” He then added, “Never again! Never again!” Nine hundred Jewish defenders had committed suicide at Masada in 73 A.D. while Samson had killed himself and his captors by pushing apart the temple pillars where he was chained. “For Israel’s nuclear advocates, the Samson Option became another way of saying ‘Never again!’” Continue reading →

The Rubber Hits the Road

Posted on by

The phrase “the rubber hits the road” means when something begins, gets serious, or when an idea is put into practice.  Its source, I think, is obvious – it must refer to where an automobile tire contacts pavement and, therefore, has traction.  But I wondered how well it was documented.

Know Your Phrase reports the earliest written usage was in a 1956 newspaper article, where the phrase was stated as “when the rubber meets the road” and notes The Modern American Usage: A Guide, first published in 1966, mentions “the rubber hits the road” was gaining popularity.

Wiktionary lists a book from 1928, How to Avoid Automobile Accident: “Even 500 feet probably wouldn’t allow you to brake to a stop, because it’s ‘where the rubber meets the road‘ that counts.”

American Culture Explained (now there’s an ambitious website) states that racing is the source, though they offer no reference.

One thread of comments mentioned a recent version: “when the rubber hits the sky“, used for a humorous, purposely-mixed metaphor meaning “where practicality meets pie-in-the-sky visions.”

Since the first mass-produced car – the Ford Model T – was introduced in 1908, it seems that the phrase didn’t take long to become popular.

Bosnian Serbs Erect Statue for Assassin Who Started WWI

Posted on by

Recent commemorations of the beginning of World War I led me to reflect on the difficulties or impossibilities of overcoming centuries of ethnic hatred. One news report described how “Artists and diplomats declared a new century of peace and unity in Europe …in the city where the first two shots of World War I were fired…” Not everyone saw it that way. Another report described Bosnian Serbs unveiling a statute of Gavrilo Princip, the Bosnian Serb teenager who killed Crown Prince Ferdinand after Ferdinand had travelled to Sarajevo to inspect his occupying troops.

A hundred years of time have not resolved the divisions. Austrian President Heinz Fischer said “Europeans have learned that no problem can be solved by war. Milorad Dodik, president of the Bosnian Serb half of the country called Princip “…a freedom fighter and the Austro Hungarian empire was an occupier here.”  He added that the people are still divided in “…this country which is being held together by international violence.” An actor portraying Princip posed in front of his statue with a pistol as people shouted “shoot at NATO” and “shoot at the EU.” Continue reading →

Well Behaved Women Seldom Make History

Posted on by

Scarlet SistersThe Scarlet Sisters, by Myra MacPherson, is subtitled Sex, Suffrage, and Scandal in the Gilded Age.  It is the story of “two improper Victorians” who were famous in their day for championing women’s rights and infamous for scandals.  Victoria Woodhull and Tennessee Claflin “rose from poverty, a trashy family, and a childhood of scam fortune-telling,” (including murderously sham cancer ‘treatments,’) “to become rich, powerful, and infamous.”  MacPherson notes that the sisters as well as their rivals and supporters wrote various lies and inconsistencies which make a biography difficult to assemble.

While I had not heard of the sisters before reading this book, they gained supporters and enemies whose names I recognize: the tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt, suffragettes Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, and radical socialist Karl Marx.  This is only a sample of their associates; the “Cast of Characters” lists fifty-two people.

Spiritualism was their usual entry into famous social circles, and the rags-to-riches backgrounds of many Gilded Age tycoons offered an accepting attitude towards their origins.  These connections supported them when they opened the first woman-owned brokerage house on Wall Street, where they made and lost a fortune. Continue reading →

Salt of the Earth

Posted on by

The Phrase Finder explains that the expression refers to those “…of great worth and reliability.” The expression was mentioned in the King James version of the Bible in Mathew 5:13. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the expression is that its meaning is in conflict with the fact that salt was spread on the land to poison it for growing crops in the Middle Ages “…as a punishment to landowners who had transgressed against society in some way.” The positive connotation of the expression was instead based on the value of salt. The powerful were “above the salt” and valued workers were “worth their salt.”