Thoughts Before The Alarm Sounds

     Because genealogy can be a time-consuming passion, I didn't get involved in it until I retired, and I am so sorry I waited that long. Discovering the identities of my ancestors made me hungry to know more about their lives. The records of genealogy: certificates of birth, death, marriage, etc., can provide the skeleton of family history, but it's the stories that flesh it out.      What really whetted my appetite for more knowledge was my memory of the few stories my grandfather told me. Although he may not have remembered what happened yesterday – in his last years all days were alike – he told me in great detail about the summer he “hired out” at the age of 18: the name of the farmer who hired him, what he did from sunrise to sunset, how much he was paid (a dollar a day), and just about every other detail of those three months.      Grandpa was long dead when I realized that there was so much more he could have told me...

     I have often heard it said that the Constitution of the United States is based upon the Ten Commandments, so I finally decided to check it for myself. I suggest that individuals who think this is the case should do the same. They may be in for a surprise.      But for those who do not have the time or inclination to make such a comparison, I present the following:       Commandment I - Thou shalt have no other gods before me. The only time God is mentioned in the Constitution is at the end of Article VII: Done in convention . . . in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty seven . . . In fact, Amendment I expressly forbids any mention of religion.      Commandment II - Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image. The Constitution is silent on this Commandment.       Commandment III - Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain. Th...

     Since both the stock market and the jobs market are looking better lately, the GOP has invented a new line of BS: the high price of gasoline is the fault of President Obama. Newt Gingrich in particular is going about bragging that, if elected, he will quickly lower the price to $2.50 per gallon. He bases that figure on the fact that it was $1.13 when he was speaker of the house. Really Newt, if the president has that much control, why don't just we reelect the president from those days: Bill Clinton?      Actually Newt, along with the rest of the clowns, is figuring on lowering the price by means of their tried and true method: Drill, baby, drill. It is their claim that the Obama administration is holding back production in order to keep the price high. The theory is that by so doing, we will be forced to buy green, energy-efficient cars. Unfortunately, the record doesn't accord with this theory.      At the end of 2008,...

     I have posted several blogs in which I stated that the stimulus promoted by President Obama was too small and that another was necessary. I backed up my suggestion with data indicating that President Roosevelt's stimulus, i.e., the New Deal, was working until he tried to balance the budget in 1937.      I believe I was right in advocating a stimulus to promote jobs under the economic conditions of the past, but as far as the current situation is concerned, I am beginning to think I was wrong! The economy is vastly different from the one that prevailed during the Great Depression.      It is true that a stimulus in the form of government spending on projects for which the government is most efficient , i.e., providing a single service for many customers, will provide a limited number of jobs. Society does not need competing armies, courts and legal systems, police forces, power grids, government buildings or interstate hi...

This is the time of the year when Sunday evening's TV programming is dependent upon how long it takes the golfers to come up with a winner. It doesn't matter how long a period the network allows in the schedule – it is going to take an extra half hour or so to complete the rounds. I have been asked so often why I do not play golf, that I finally decided to write the true story of my brief career in the game. T here is a saying that only a thin line separates comedy from tragedy. The way I played golf could be classified as either one depending upon your point of view. Be that as it may, I believe the way my golfing career ended is a good example of the close relationship between the two. About 1960, at the urging of some of my fellow employees, I decided to try my hand at golf, so I bought a cheap set of clubs and went out each Saturday to develop my game. At first I thought my terrible playing was simply because I was a beginner, but as time went on and I showed little...

     I realize that the matter of Obama and the Catholic Bishops has been overworked lately, but I can't help weighing in with some thoughts on the subject.      In the first place, I can see both sides of the argument: freedom of religion vs. insurance-paid family planning.      But some columnists have been throwing around assumptions that appear to me to be a misuse of the English language. Recently I have read several columns in which the government, President Obama in particular, was accused of requiring the church to go against its “conscience.”      I do not believe that the Catholic Church or a corporation or a high school class or any other organized set of people can have a conscience, Organizations are groups of human beings; each member of the group has a unique conscience. There may be an average of individual consciences of the members, but such an average is as different from a true conscie...

      T he discussion of determinism vs. free will has been going on since the days of the Greek philosophers, and will probably never be settled. Is it possible that both views are correct? How could that be true? Before I get into the various arguments, I want to set up the following assumptions: (a) There is a one-to-one correspondence between the state of the brain and the subjective experience occurring at any given time (b) Since the brain is not an isolated system, it must be part of a larger system – the body, sense organs, the body’s immediate surroundings, etc. - which obeys certain deterministic laws. According to determinists, every move we make is dictated by our previous experiences, situations, conditions, etc. – everything which has gone before. The feeling that we select courses of action in response to immediate circumstances is an illusion. The subject can no more change the decision than a planet can change its orbit. If all our deci...

     One of the oldest truisms(?) about old age is, “Old age is the time when your broad mind and narrow waist change places.” While it may be true in some cases, for me it's more like, “Old age is the time when your broad mind and narrow waist get closer together.” My problem is that the older I get, the more I can see both sides of many controversies; as a result, I have trouble deciding which side I agree with.      Two examples from this past week come to mind. The first is the Healthcare Act's requirement that all employers who offer health care insurance to their employees must include contraception costs for those who request it. At first reading this sounds OK to me; not surprisingly, the Catholic church disagrees, to the extent that many Catholic organizations are planning to discontinue coverage rather than comply.      Because the Catholic church is not a government organization, it seems to me that Catholic instit...

     The ideas presented here are excerpted from the book, “The Price Of Civilization” by Jeffrey D. Sachs. I highly recommend reading the entire book.       Not surprisingly, President Obama's recent State of the Union Address was his opening shot across the bow of the presidential campaign, but if examined from a high enough level of abstraction, it spelled out the requirements of a healthy economic system. I hate to think the whole thing was just campaign rhetoric, but based on his past performance I am inclined to take a “wait and see” attitude concerning progress in that direction.      Generally speaking, there are three major attributes of such a system: efficiency, fairness and sustainability.      Efficiency:      Ronald Reagan was partly right – too much government control of the economy causes problems, but he was also partly wrong – uncontrolled free markets also l...

    The Associated Press recently printed an article entitled “Positions of the Candidates” , which outlined the opinions of five Emmett Kelly understudies, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Rick Perry, Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum, on various campaign issues. (For younger readers, Emmett Kelly, who based his sad faced “Weary Willie” on depression era hobos, was perhaps the most famous clown in circus history.)     The issues discussed were Abortion, the Economy, Education, Energy, the Environment, Health Care, Taxes and Terrorism. No mention was made of what is probably the most important of all presidential responsibilities: Foreign Affairs. Why would that be?      Here are a few possibilities: Not even one of the greatest group of comedians in history thinks that management of foreign affairs is as important as these other “hot button” issues. Newt understands the meaning of the word “affairs” only when it is not preceded by any modif...

     On October 24, 2011, I wrote about the ridiculous decision of the Supreme Court in the case of Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission , “In January 2010, using a logic that defied common sense, in the case of Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission five Supreme Court Justices suddenly transformed corporations into human beings, with a power that flesh and blood humans do not have: they can spend unlimited amounts of money in order to buy elections.”      Although most of the comments I have received have been favorable, I have been taken to task by “Pennsylvania's #1 Conservative Jungle Cat,” Phil Gruber. According to him, “American law has long held that corporations should be treated as people in the eyes of the law. After all, a corporation is just a group of people who use shared capital to make a profit. Grunenberger simply feels broadsided by facts he did not know.”      While it is true that from...

     Let's imagine for a minute that scientists discovered that the Mayans got it right – the world is going to end on December 21, 2012. How would you want to spend your time until that day? The answers would probably run the gamut from “party unceasingly” to “pray unceasingly.”      As for me, I would probably come down somewhere in the middle. I am pretty happy with the way things are now, and I would want to continue as is with one addition: my immediate family is spread across the country, and I would like to get them all together for a visit – kids, grandkids and great-grandkids. If I have wronged anyone over the years, I would ask for their forgiveness, and anyone who has done me dirty, I would forgive you. There is a saying, “The best revenge is to live well.” I've done that.      Come to think about it these are good ideas, at least for me, even if the Mayans are wrong.      I think it would be a...

Although 2011 was not a very good year for planet earth, at least for the humans living there, if I am going to be truthful, it was an average year for me personally. Except for climbing stairs, or even walking uphill, I do not think my physical condition is much worse than it was a year ago. (Of course, it's definitely not any better.) But I have been warm and well fed, and the fun times have outnumbered the other kind many times over. But as with most old accountants, in order to keep from losing my balance I need to formally close the books on the old year, and set things up for the new. Literally! We keep reasonably accurate financial records throughout the year, and I like to use them to get some idea what to expect in the new year. For example, the Social Security Cost Of Living Adjustment (COLA) amounts to 3.6%. That's not bad, although considering there has not been an increase since 2009, it's not really a world-beater. The government said inflation was not a fa...

We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure the domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. Preamble to the Constitution of the United States While we as a nation have never completely achieved the high ideals outlined in the Constitution, we have got ever closer over the last 224 years. And why is that? Because as a people we have kept our eyes on the prize. And I think that although we still have our eyes on the prize, it has become more of a moving target, and it is moving away from us. Washington is following the new Golden Rule: He who has the gold makes the rule. An October report issued by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office spells out who is getting the gold: between 1979 and 2007 the top 1 percent of Americans with the highest...

     Much heat has been generated on the subject of the huge salaries received by the CEOs of major corporations. One popular method of illustrating the obscenity is by showing the CEO's salary as a multiple of a typical production worker's salary. It is not unusual for the CEO's salary to be equal to 300, 400 or even 600 times the hourly workers income.      The following table is a listing of the 2010 salary and other income paid to the heads of several of our largest corporations.* Much of the “other“ income is not taxed until it is actually received. Because much of it consists of stock options, it may be considerably more valuable at that time then as shown here; options will be taxed at a maximum rate of 15%.      Also shown is the executive's total earnings per minute, based on 40 hours per week for 52 weeks.    Company            Total          Salary ...

Meaning (m ë ‛ ning), n. what is intended to be, or actually is, expressed or indicated. (Webster's Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary). At this season a large number of letter-writers to the editor of any newspaper express concern over the use of the term “Happy Holidays” instead of the traditional “Merry Christmas.” The writers feel that the holiday is somehow demeaned by the former greeting. The meaning of any expression is what the speaker intends it to be – nothing more, nothing less. If the listener takes some other meaning from the expression for any reason, e.g, the speaker has expressed it badly, the listener did not hear it correctly, or even if he disagrees with the speaker, it has no effect on the meaning. For this reason, the speaker should be careful to say exactly what he means. If he is a Christian, and Christmas has its usual deep meaning for him, he should say “Merry Christmas.” In return, if the listener truly intends for the speaker to celebrate the holid...

Rite (r ī t), n. Any customary observance or practice. (Webster's Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary.) Rite, n. A religious or semi-religious ceremony fixed by law, precept or custom, with the essential oil of sincerity carefully squeezed out of it. (Ambrose Bierce – The Devil's dictionary.) The local newspaper recently announced that our district representative to Congress is scheduling a series of “town hall” meetings with his constituents in order to discuss his plans for creating jobs, and to listen to the participants' ideas on the subject. He holds these meetings several times throughout the year, so I feel justified in considering them “rites” under the first definition above, and it has been my experience that they also satisfy the second definition. His ideas for creating jobs are not really ideas - they are ideology: (1) cut taxes, particularly on higher income taxpayers, and (2) cut government spending. These are the same trite recommendations which he ma...

        Dear Joe, First I want to congratulate you on your record as a coach, and on the many honors and awards you have received over the years. I especially want to applaud your stressing of academic achievement as well as athletic ability for your players. Such an effort is an important contribution toward the goal of turning out good, well-rounded citizens. I know that you reported what you heard to your bosses, which is exactly what the law requires. But Joe, you know that as an exemplary citizen that is not enough. I am reminded of the attack on Kitty Genovese in 1964. She was stabbed, but managed to escape her attacker for a short time. He came back 10 minutes later, raped her, and finished her off. Reportedly, several neighbors heard or saw parts of the attack, but no one called the police - If only one person had, she might be alive today. I know this is not quite the same, but the principal is similar. Kitty lost her life, and these yo...

Who said , “. . . more spending is not what California or this country needs,” and “. . .congressional Democrats and the administration continue to insist that we can spend our way out of this recession and create jobs, but the numbers just don't add up?" A Republican? Right. And who said, "We don't spend money on defense to create jobs. But defense cuts are certainly a path to job loss, especially among our high-skilled workforces. There is no private sector alternative to compensate for the government's investment?" A Democrat? Wrong! Both comments were made by the same person – Rep. Buck McKeon, R-Calif! In the first case, Rep. McKeon was speaking about President Obama's $825B stimulus package in 2009. In the second instance, McKeon, now Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, was speaking about the military budget, which faces spending cuts of up to $600B if the bipartisan deficit cutting panel can't find a compromise within the next 18...

Since medieval times, corporations have been legal formats created by the government, such as the Crown, Governor, Legislature, etc., to enable citizens to do business as a group. As the American colonies developed and won their independence, corporations for the most part remained in the background. (The Boston Tea Party, wherein the Sons of Liberty dumped 342 crates of British East India Company tea into the ocean, was a notable exception.) The vast majority of Americans at the time lived and worked on small family farms. The real threat was the unilateral, unaccountable power of King George III, and the founders of a new nation, skeptical of that kind of power, formed a government of checks and balances to prevent any one branch from getting too powerful. Although corporations were not mentioned in the Constitution, Thomas Jefferson famously noted that representative government’s purpose was “to curb the excesses of the monied interests.” After the American Revolution, corporatio...