Thoughts Before The Alarm Sounds

     Probably the most common “secret” questions by which an online account user's identity is supposed to be verified are:      What is your mother's maiden name?      What was the name of your first elementary school?      Where did you meet your spouse?       And in these days where everything is available on the world wide web, what is secret about them? Anyone with half an ounce of computer knowledge can often get the answers in a few minutes.      Recently I called my bank and asked to submit new answers to my secret questions, and was told that once one has the answers established, they cannot be changed. How can your mother's maiden name be different from what it was when you originally submitted it?      Of course, it isn't different, but that does not mean that one can't change the answer to the question. What difference does it mak...

     A few days ago I posted a blog in which I called one of the presidential candidates a hypocrite, and presented an argument which I thought justified the appellation. A short time letter one of my Facebook friends unfriended me. This is fine – he has as much right to do that as I have to express my opinion.      We do not know each other except through Facebook, but I sincerely hope that if we did, we would display what is becoming a rare faculty these days: disagreeing and yet remaining friends.      The Bible says: “. . . unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” I am not an expert on the kingdom of heaven, but the statement sounds like good advice in the personal relations field. I have seen children fight as if they meant to kill each other, and an hour later they were again best friends.      The choice today seems to be between friendship and ...

     In a September 25th speech at Education Nation, Mitt Romney said: “The largest contributors to the Democratic Party are teachers' unions. And so, if they can elect someone, then that person is supposed to be representing the public vis-a-vis the teachers' union, but actually most of the money came from the teachers' union. It's an extraordinary conflict of interest. That's something I think is a problem and should be addressed.” He added later, “We simply can't have a setting where the teachers' unions are able to contribute tens of millions of dollars to the campaigns of politicians and then those politicians, when elected, stand across from them at the bargaining table.”      Romney has a point – according to Open Secrets, the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association contributed about $5.4M to federal candidates, parties and committees during the 2008 election cycle. About 95% of the contributions went to Dem...

According to the non-partisan Tax Policy Center, 93% of the non-taxpaying freeloading Americans earn $50K or less, 5% earn between $50K and $100K, and the remaining 430,000 nonpayers earn more than $100K per year. The last group includes about 4,000 households with annual incomes in excess of $1M. In spite of what Mr. Romney said, I doubt that all of these “government dependent” people are going to vote for Mr. Obama. But lately there have been signs that the group of people which the GOP considers unworthy of consideration is much larger than the 47% group. For example, in honor of the Labor Day holiday, Eric Cantor, the house majority leader, sent out the following Tweet: “Today, we celebrate those who have taken a risk, worked hard, built a business and earned their own success.” This would come as a surprise to Matthew Maguire, who first proposed the holiday in 1882 while serving as the secretary of the Central Labor Union of New York, or Peter J. McGuire of the American...

Let's pretend that you are the sole proprietor of a small business – one that employs 15 or 20 people. Suppose you manufacture two products: shirts and widgets. Both lines are selling very well - your bottom line nets out to about $100K, on which you pay about $15K in income tax after deductions. Now the government, in its relentless pursuit of job creation, lowers your taxes to $13K. How many new employees will you hire with that extra $2,000? (A no-brainer.) Suddenly your sales of shirts drop 50% because your competitors have outsourced their production to India; do you keep all the employees in the shirt production line, or do you lay some of them off? (Another no-brainer.) Your accountant tells you that the government will give you a hefty allowance if you install automated equipment (made in China) that will enable you to compete. In fact, you will need even less employees than you have now! Do you buy the new equipment? (This is almost too simple.) Suddenly a ne...

I have just finished watching Clint Eastwood's speech to the Republican National Convention for the umpteenth time, and since just about everyone else has already sounded off on the matter, I have decided it is now my turn. Although as a liberal I am expected to disagree with everything Clint said, there are a few things with which I agree. For example, I think it would be a good idea to end the adventure in Afghanistan. Our objective was to get Osama bin Laden, and we have done so. As Clint said, we should have consulted the Russians on the problems of stabilizing that country – if we had, we would have left when we got Osama. It is not as if we are fighting for the security of the United States; it is extremely doubtful that the Afghans would attack us if we left. The rest of the world knows the tribal situation in Afghanistan, and is laughing at our stupidity. Clint also mentioned that some of us in Obama's own party are disappointed that the economic problems of ...