OUR BLOGGERS ARE SAYING …
Gullibility is where you find it ... everywhere
By THOMAS MITCHELL
Our newspapers frequently offer an odd juxtaposition of events daring us to see parallels, to compare and contrast.
Glenn Cook's column in the Sunday Review-Journal on how the Social Security and Medicare entitlement programs will inevitably become welfare programs with means testing requirements brought to mind a piece in The Wall Street Journal a couple of days earlier by Stephen Greenspan, an emeritus professor of educational psychology at the University of Connecticut and author of the 2009 "Annals of Gullibility."
Greenspan, no relation to the former Fed chairman, is twice an authority on gullibility. He has studied it and he has lived it. Greenspan lost a portion of his personal savings in the Bernard Madoff Ponzi scheme that wiped out so many investors and charitable organizations recently.
The two articles made me stop and ask: What is the difference between entitlement programs and Ponzi schemes?
According to the Securities and Exchange Commission, Ponzi schemes are basically pyramid schemes that are named for Charles Ponzi, who in the 1920s duped thousands of New Englanders into investing in postage stamp speculation. Ponzi claimed to be able to use the differences between currencies and stamps to give investors a 40 percent return in 90 days. In fact, earlier investors were paid handsomely and, of course, touted this to others. Ponzi was using new investors to pay the earlier ones. The pyramid collapsed when new investors failed to keep up with the promises to the earlier ones.
Social Security and Medicare are funded by current workers who are taxed to pay for current retirees. The taxes paid in by the current retirees were long ago spent on whatever the hell Congress wanted.
Both schemes are mathematically impossible to maintain. They both are fraud.
The only difference is that one is voluntary and the other is mandatory. ...
For more, visit lvrj.com/blogs/mitchell
On exercise in the New Year
By JOHN L. SMITH
The new year is marked by many changes. One of my favorites is the increased traffic at the YMCA and other fitness centers.
Each year about this time, an army of freshly resolved exercise fanatics are stretching their tendons like suspenders and pulling the tags off their new workout suits. They are attempting another assault on Mt. Physical Fitness, which for most of us makes Everest look like a speed bump. ...
Saint Mark of Missouri belonged to no fitness clubs I know of, which is perhaps why he lived to 75.
As he rambled into middle age, he observed, "I am pushing sixty. That is enough exercise for me."
As he grew older, he added, "I have never taken any exercise except sleeping and resting."
In his late years he said, "I take my only exercise acting as pallbearer at the funerals of my friends who exercise regularly."
That line is sometimes attributed to Chauncey Depew, but this ain't the Church of Chauncey pal.
Amen, Saint Mark. Now go in peace.
For more, visit lvrj.com/blogs/smith
About that bailout for the 'arts' ...
By VIN SUPRYNOWICZ
"While government bailouts are being offered or considered for financial institutions, the auto industry, homeowners and so many other needy and worthy sectors, one group is quickly and rather quietly falling apart: our nation's arts organizations," writes Michael Kaiser, chief plutocrat of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. ...
"In the past few months, dozens of opera companies, theater companies, dance groups, museums and symphonies have either closed or suffered major cash crises," Mr. Kaiser whines. "We need an emergency grant for arts organizations in America."
Hoo-hah. ...
Without the government subsidies he calls for -- and the political oversight such subsidies always bring -- "We are losing the entertainment and inspiration we need more than ever during this terribly scary time," Mr. Kaiser sobs, hopping from one foot to another like a little boy who should really visit the restroom. "As we try to rebuild America's image abroad, we are losing our most potent goodwill ambassadors."
Oh, hogwash. ...
Mr. Kaiser convinces himself "the arts" are going bankrupt because he defines "the arts" as the "respectable" art forms of dead generations performed in sumptuous but technologically retrograde clamshell mortuaries -- opera, ballet, the symphony -- which cannot support themselves in free competition with the ticket sales or advertising revenues that support America's REAL "potent goodwill ambassadors" -- Hollywood movies, television shows, popular music and video games.
All vibrant, constantly innovating art forms seem to be doing just fine, thank you, without a penny of "emergency taxpayer grants."
For more visit, lvrj.com/blogs/vin
