ELIMINATE THE DEATH PENALTY  People tend to be ambivalent about the death penalty.  The gruesome details of an execution, its ghoulish ritual and antiseptic thoroughness are revolting, yet every time we read about another heinous crime committed with the exquisite cruelty of some hellish monster it is almost impossible not to wish him to be put out of his misery and gone from this earth.

     Regardless of one's emotions either way, there are good reasons to eliminate the death penalty, and it should be remembered  that a criminal does not go free simply because he isn't killed.  Imprisonment for life, being regimented to the last detail as the decades drone on, is hardly a picnic.  Is that not really worse than death?

     The question whether the death penalty acts as a net deterrence to crime will probably always be debated  but one factor which is not always considered throws doubt on it.  As an execution can be delayed almost indefinitely with appeals, writs and whatnot, it does not appear imminent until near the end of the line.  John Wayne Gacy said on the way to his execution that he did not believe it would happen.  He had had so many delays and reprieves that final doom had become unreal.  Probably no one commits a crime with the expectation of being caught and executed.

     The greatest price we pay for the death penalty is the execution of innocent men, and sometimes women. (There is serious doubt to this day about the guilt of Barbara Graham, about whom the movie "I Want to Live" was made).  This is true not simply in some rare instance, but with horrifying frequency.  Not long ago in Illinois alone 13 men were released from death row on the strength of DNA evidence showing their innocence.  Since then that number has increased by seven.  Nationwide, since 1973, about 150 prisoners under the death sentence have been exonerated and released by virtue of DNA proof of innocence. There are probably many more who would be exonerated if the right steps to do so were to be taken.

     But DNA exoneration is not the whole of the matter. How many other innocent men are executed for crimes wherein DNA could neither prove nor disprove guilt?  For example, what would DNA have had to do with the terrible assassination of President Kennedy, when murder was committed with a rifle fired from a substantial distance from the victim?  There are almost certainly many  innocent men on death row who were convicted of crimes with no relevance to DNA.  And the guilty ones remain loose, free to work their murderous horors on new victims.  Just recently a mad man shot and severely wounded a member of Congress in Arizona and at this time she is in a hospital in critical condition, yet DNA would appear to be able to prove nothing in the matter one way or the other.   

     The death penalty certainly does deter the dead convict, but does it deter others who do not expect to be caught and therefore do not consider what might happen to them if they are?  Some statistics appear to show that the death penalty has little or no effect on the crime rate. 

     One effect of the death penalty is the refusal by countries around the world to extradite persons to the United States if they might face the death penalty. They should not be criticized for that.  Just as we have our social and legal policies, they have theirs.  But here, too, as in the cases of wrongful convictions, the guilty go free.

     Execution is brutal and cannot be made into anything less.  It puts life into the hands of sometimes corrupt and excessively ambitious prosecutors and, yes, sometimes even the police themselves, who have been known to withhold or even falsify evidence.  Add to that the defective work of some defense counsel.  When all the pros and cons are sifted out the death penalty should be eliminated

The Maid of the Morning Stretch

 

The true value of a human being is determined primarily by the measure and the sense in which he

attained liberation from the self.

Albert Einstein

The Causes of the American Civil War

     In 1861 Confederate General Beauregard fired on Fort Sumpter, South Carolina, then held by Union Forces, and that was the spark which ignited the Civil War, though it been brewing for a long time.  To say that slavery was "the cause" of the war is misleading.  There were few serious demands for its abolition.  The real underlying issue was over its territorial spread beyond the South and for a long time various compromises, most notably the Missouri Compromise, preserved an uneasy balance between contending forces.  Three major destabilizing  events, all occuring in the 1850s, upset that balance.  First there was the Compromise of 1850 resulting in the Fugitive Slave Act which required runaway slaves to be returned from the North to their "owners"in the South.  The  Act was widely disregarded in the North.  Second was the Kansas-Nebraska Act which allowed slavery to be introduced in northern territories  by popular vote and, finally the Dred Scott decision by the Supreme Court, which held that Dred Scott, a slave who had traveled north and had lived in several free states, could not sue to affirm his freedom even though he had resided in states where slavery was disallowed.  If the Dred Scott decision had continued to be the law, the emancipation of slaves might have become a dead issue, as slavery would have become effectively a national institution, a result which was morally repugnant to a great part of the population, mostly but not entirely in the North.

     Abolitionists were furious and a Kansas man named John Brown led a band of armed men to Harper's Ferry, Virginia (now in West Virginia) to free slaves by force.  He was arrested by union soldiers and hanged.  Tension built with the secession of eleven states from the Union (or thirteen if you count Missouri and Kentucky) and by the claim by both sides to the control of Fort Sumpter, South Carolina, located in Charleston Harbor.  Although the attack on Fort Sumpter was the spark which ignited the keg, the stage had been set long before by the Southern states' insistence on their right to secede from the Union and Abraham Lincoln's refusal to concede that right and his insistence that slavery be confined to the states where it then existed in the South.  Lincoln had denounced slavery all his life, contrary the modern contention that he waffled on it, but he believed that the Constitution fixed the status quo but that it would eventually end for moral and economic reasons under its own weight, as it did in other countries.  Southern politicians claimed a right to secede at will and they feared being overwhelmed by the North and outvoted by a hostile Congress if they remained in the Union.  Other issues were in the picture, including tariffs enacted at the behest of northern industrial states, which raised the price of foreign manufactured goods and diminished the economic influence of cotton.  Cultural differences cannot be discounted either, though that factor cannot be easily quantified.  The  spread of slavery beyond the South was the great issue, however, not its existence in the South itself, which was never seriously questioned by more than a minority in the North until near the end of the War.  Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation was a war  measure with limited application, and Lincoln never claimed otherwise.  Slavery ended with the collapse of the Southern war effort in 1865 and the enactment of the "Civil War Amendments" to the Constitution, thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth.  The War resulted in some 620,000 battlefield casualties and severe economic injury to the South.

Go Go Go --- St. Louis Cardinals

 

Central Casting

 

Salvation

 

Welcome to the World of Intellectual Exploration

 

Bartender Story
A Democrat walks into a bar and flashes a wad of bills around. He swaggers up to the bartender and says "drinks all around, except for the Republican over there". To his surprise the Republican says "thank you". Thinking that maybe he didn't hear that remark correctly he waits until everyone has finished his drink and yells "drinks all around, except for the Republican over there". again, the Republican says "thank you". So he says to the bartender "how come that stupid Republican keeps thanking me for not buying him drinks"? "Because" the bartender responds "he owns the place and you're buying for everyone else".

Thought for the Day

The New Colossus by Emma Lazarus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

"Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she

With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

The Many Legs of Florida

 

Good Times at the Mucky Duck

 

The Facts about Social Security --- Revised and Updated

;The Facts About Social Security
Social Security has traditionally been a prime target of those on the far right, and now the left, and the subject of more misunderstanding and factual mistatement than almost anything else under public revue. As a conservative I find this very embarrassing but I have to plead guilty, having repeated a lot of the nonsense at one time or another myself. This essay is offered in order to try to clear away the cobwebs and misunderstandings created by Social Security's detractors by showing (A) That Social Security is not a "Ponzi scheme" as its detractors claim, (B) That it is not "broke" (C) That if you are in the system there is an account with your name on it, contrary to the claim of the detractors and (D) That the shortfall in Social Security's ability to satisfy its purposes, predicted to occur in about the year 2035, is not so serious that it cannot be corrected fairly easily and satisfactorily with clearly available and sensible measures. I am not, however, interested in being a propagandist or cheer leader for Social Security. It has its problems. They can and should be solved and, with some repair work, the system with its basic structure can and should be maintained. Here are some common errors and my response to them.
(1) "Contrary to what you are told, there is no Social Security account with your name on it". That is not true. There is an account with your name on it, identical in kind to accounts maintained by private insurance companies for people who purchase commercial annuities. The difference between Social Security and a "managing agency", which a ponzi scheme purports to be but is not, is that Social Security does not hold, or claim to hold, a lump sum for the client which he originally contributed to his account, plus interest accruing over time, and which he can demand and receive any time, or on specified withdrawal dates during the year. This is what a "managing agency" is. Social Security is a "pension program". There is no "lump sum" belonging to you because you never contributed a "lump sum" in the first place. A sum of money cannot accrue interest if there simply is no sum of money to accrue. WHEN CONSIDERING SOCIAL SECURITY, "RETURN ON INVESTMENT" IS ENTIRELY IRRELEVANT TO THE INDIVIDUAL ANNUITANT BECAUSE THERE SIMPLY IS NO MANAGED "INVESTMENT" OF PRINCIPAL. Or here is another way of thinking about the matter. Suppose that Joe Shmo buys a five dollar lottery ticket and wins a million dollars while at the same time Doris Doe also buys a five dollar ticket but wins nothing. Does Doris have a right to complain that Joe won an amount which was enormously in excess of what he paid in while she lost her whole payment? No. Each one paid five dollars and each received what he and she paid for, a chance to win a large sum of money --- not the same dollars used to buy the tickets, or those same dollars enchanced through wise investments and prudent savings. Each purchaser wanted a windfall, but Joe Shmo won and Doris Doe lost. I may pay into Social Security all my life and die too early to receive any benefit while someone else receives benefits for many years. That's the system. Those are the breaks of the game, and that's the way all insurance works.
(2) "When you die your heirs will get nothing from Social Security". True, but irrelevant. Social Security was never represented as a way of building a transferable estate. If you want that, you will have to do it on your own or persuade the government to convert Social Security to something else. It is a pension annuity program and like all pension programs its benefits expire with your death or the death of you and your spouse. If you buy a commercial annuity from an insurance company your annuity will also expire with your death unless you take a reduced monthly amount with a joint-and-survivor feature.
(3) "Social Security is a Ponzi Scheme". That is simply untrue all the way through. The name "Ponzi" came from the name Charles Ponzi, a Boston swindler who operated a pyramid whereby a small number of investors were paid from the contributions of a larger number of more recently enrolled investors. The scheme required an ever-increasing pool of "investors" whose contributions were used to pay earlier "investors". Jeff Jacoby, a conservative columnist, in citing a writer named Mitchell Zukov, wrote in a September 6, 2011 column; "Ponzi's scheme was a deliberate swindle that lured its victims with bald lies and get-rich-quick promises, . . . . whereas Social Security fully discloses its operations and makes no promise of huge returns. Ponzi schemes are intended to defraud; Social Security was designed to be a social safety net for the old". IN SEVENTY-FIVE YEARS, IT HAS NEVER MISSED A PAYMENT. Social Security is not only not a "Ponzi Scheme", it is not in any way a fraudulent enterprise, as every aspect of it is out in the open. Fraudulent schemes and embezzlement do not result in $2.5 trillion surpluses, which is the surplus now managed by the Social Security Administration, estimated to rise to $3.7 trillion by 2022 after a near-term PLANNED fall due to the influx of Boomers. In any case, while some adjustments will have to be made to preserve Social Security even on the assumption that the Treasury pays its debt to Social Security (see paragraph(4) below), I am quite sure that Bernie Madoff's clients wish that his scheme had performed as well and reliably for them as Social Security has.
There are two necessary caveats, however. First, If Congress never intended to pay its debt to Social Security's beneficiaries, incurred by means of bonds as discussed at paragraph (4) below, but instead intended and intends to devise some scheme for defaulting on that debt and blaming Social Security itself for running out of money it will be the greatest case of grand larceny in the nation's history, a monstrous crime with no historical precedent in this country. IF THAT IS THE INTENT IT MUST BE STOPPED. Second, There are a lot of prophets of gloom and doom running around who tell us that the Euro is about to collapse, and with it every economy in Europe, and following that the currency and economy of the United States, and for all I know that may be true. I'm not an economist. To conclude that they are all nuts, however, before you have even heard their arguments is unreasonable because there are some smart people in that group and their arguments do not sound irrational, at least not to me. If they are right then everything will collapse at once and why worry about Social Security? You may as well try to sell refrigerators to the Eskimos, go hang out with Glenn Beck or bang your head against a wall because who cares?
(4) "But the system is out of money". No, it isn't unless, as discussed at paragraph (3) above, Congress defaults on its bonded debt. If someone has a $2.5 trillion surplus, which Social Security does have, he is not "out of money". Then where is the money? It is invested in non-negotiable government bonds and those bonds are real paper bonds contained in physical boxes in Martinsburg, West Virginia. They are not just electronic blips in a computer. "But the government might default". Yes, and the Chinese could say the same thing about their U.S. bonds. "But the bonds held by Social Security are non-negotiable". Yes, because Social Security isn't allowed to make private investments by law and because the government does not want a secondary bond market competing with its own. Anyway, we have always been told that the safest investment is U.S. bonds. In other words the federal government borrowed the money which America's working people, and their employers, contributed and now the far left and the far right do not want the Treasury to pay it back, or so it seems. In fact, as discussed, the government would actually be stealing this money. We should always return to the point that Social Security is sound in and of itself and that the critical problem is the debt to Social Security by the Treasury. In other words, the problem is external, not internal.
This is really as much about truth and accuracy as it is about Social Security. No one is relieved of the moral and ethical responsibility to be honest with others even when it may not support his or her own ideology. When anyone, conservative, liberal or otherwise, ignores or deliberately obscures the truth because to do so would be idealogically inconvenient it undermines his credibility on everything --- on Social Security and everything else.
(5) "Contributions are mandatory". That is true. Any large developed country like the United States faces the problem of retirement and how to avoid retired people being indigent. Perhaps no answer to that is completely satisfactory. Given the temperament of the American people the prospect of millions of people with no means of sustenance is unrealistic. So what can be done? People can be urged to save on their own but many will not, and if they do not they will be a burden on their children or society in general. They can have their own private fund to be managed but not touched, an approach favored by President George W. Bush, but what if the market goes into a drastic decline and the savings evaporate? Social Security is a trade-off. You pay the tax and acquire a guarenteed annuity which is not dependent on the vicissitudes of the market. There are many approaches to this, but it is hard to deny that the problem of safety in retirement is not just an individual problem. It is a social problem.
(6) "Social Security contributes to the deficit". No, Social Security has never contributed a dime to the deficit. Quite the opposite, the Treasury has been borrowing from Social Security to finance its general operations, as a result of which Social Security has $2.5 trillion worth of bonds. The false claim that the general taxpayers will have to begin financing Social Security is intended to hide the fact that Social Security has been financing the government, not the other way around, and that includes hundreds of billions of dollars of wasted money. The nonsense has gone so far that some have claimed that the government can reduce "government spending" on Social Security by cutting benefits in various ways. Here is what A. P. Martin of Fort Myers, Florida wrote the News-Press, March 10, 3013: " [C]utting benefits would do nothing to change the interest payment, which is mandated by law, and threfore would do nothing at all to reduce the national debt". The government "spends" nothing at all. It pays what it owes by law to those who have lent it huge sums of money, the annuitants who have paid the tax.
(7) "The bill for today's pensions will be paid by the next generation." The truth is that today's benefits will be paid for by everyone who pays into the system and to what generation a contributor belongs is irrelevant. That includes people now deceased who did pay but either received no benfit or relatively little benefit because they did not live long enough. Where did today's $2.5 trillion surpulus come from? It certainly did not come entirely from the next generation of working people. Some of it did, just as some people in the next generation --- those who live a long time --- will benefit from the payments of those in this and the previous generation who died or will die early. The point is that everyone in the system pays into it, but they receive benefits only if, and to the extent that, they meet longevity requirements. and it is more likely that persons of relatively early generations will receive no benefits, but will have paid into the system, than it is for persons of later generations who will live longer. Is everyone benefitted or burdened equally? Of course not. Social Security was never designed for that. Someone buys a million dollar life insurance policy and dies the next day. He (his estate) recieves a million dollars after paying one premium, perhaps only a few hundred dollars. Someone else has lived to age one hundred after having paid much more than he or his estate will receive in benefits. That's what insurance is. That's life.
We could have individually managed accounts. We could do a lot of things. But non-risk annuities paid for with a payroll tax is the choice that was made and it has worked well.
(8) "Social Security is in crisis and must be abandoned, at least as to those under fifty or some such age".
No, it is not in crisis. It is true that demographic patterns have changed with longer life spans and otherwise and that the system is expected to run into problems in about 2035 even if the treasury pays its debts, as it must. Here are some possible approaches for the future, without implying that they are all desirable or necessarily fair. They are possible. (A) Raise the ceiling on income subject to the FICA tax. (B) Raise the tax rate. (C) Raise the retirement age from 67 to 70. (D) Change the formula for the annual cost-of-living adjustment. More than 75% of the shortfall would vanish if Congrress reduced annual cost-of-living increases by 1 percentage point every year. (E) According to the News-Press of Fort Myers, Florida the entire $5.3 trillion shortfall over the next 75 years could be eliminated if payroll taxes were increased 1.1 percentage points for workers and employers. (G) Allow the non-negotiable bonds to be converted to negotiable bonds as that becomes necessary to meet current obligations. Bear in mind that no one argues that the entire treasury debt must be paid immediately. There will continue to be a FICA tax which will continue to fund the system. The bonded surplus exists to provide against shortages of cash as benefits become due.
Whatever else is done, Congress should be prohibited from using Social Security as a slush fund, and because experience shows that Congress can never be trusted to be ethical or responsible this result should be obtained by Constitutional Amendment.
(9) "We should abandon Social Security except for paying promised benefits to senrior citizens who paid into it and have relied on it". The last part is certainly true. Promises should be kept. But we should not abandon Social Security at all. The danger is that neither the right nor the left have any interest in maintaining it as to younger working people. It can be maintained, permanently. Its a question only of will. But conservatives have never liked it because they think of it as welfare. It is no such thing and never was, but curing so massive a misconception is almost beyond difficult because those on the right simply have no personal stake in it. Those on the left cannot claim credit for it so they aren't trying to protect it either. They would rather invent new schemes for wasting money, and buying votes with higher taxes, and blaming the decline of Social Security on the right.
Now Congress and the Administration have gotten into the habit of extending what was to be a "temporary" cut in the Social Security tax. That is simply another way of stealing from annuitant-beneficiaries. With cuts in the tax, the current $2.5 Trillion surplus will be depleted sooner than it would otherwise. The Democrats propose making up the deficiency caused thereby by taxing 'millionaires and billionaires'; in other words, soaking the rich. This is just more demogoguery by politicians who swim in the waters of demogoguery.
(10) "We can help to balance the budget by spending less on Social Security". This one is absolutley ridiculous. To illustrate: Suppose I owe you $120,000 payable in monthly installments of $10,000 and I decide that I need to cut my "expenses". My accountant tells me that I can do that by reducing my monthly payments to you by cutting them in half; in other words, paying you only $5,000 a month. That would certainly "cut my expenses", but only by breaching our contract. Sure, Congress can breach the governments' agreement by unilaterally reducing its bonded debt or, same thing, stretching out the payments. As long as we are at it, why doesn't the government simply cancel the debt altogether and declare Social Security a thing of the past? They would have to think about the consequences at the next election, of course, but since they don't have any integrity anyway why not defer that concern until later? [NOTE] The following is an unsigned article sent to me by a friend. I'm sorry that I can't offer and attribution. I hope that friends of Soc. Sec will saturate the internet with this sort of thing].
THE ONLY THING WRONG WITH THE GOVERNMENT'S CALCULATION OF AVAILABLE SOCIAL SECURITY IS THEY FORGOT TO FIGURE IN THE PEOPLE WHO DIED BEFORE THEY EVER COLLECTED A SOCIAL SECURITY CHECK!!!
WHERE DID THATMONEY GO?
Remember, not only did you and I contribute to Social Security but your employer did, too.
It totaled 15% of your income before taxes.
If you averaged only $30K over your working life, that's close to $220,500.
Read that again.
Did you see where the Government paid in one single penny?
We are talking about the money you and your employer put in a Government bank to insure you and I that we would have a retirement check from the money we put in, not the Government.
Now they are calling the money we put in an entitlement when we reach the age to take it back.
If you calculate the future invested value of $4,500 per year (yours & your employer's contribution) at a simple 5% interest (less than what the Government pays on the money that it borrows), after 49 years of working you'd
have $892,919.98.
If you took out only 3% per year, you'd receive $26,787.60 per year and it would last better than 30 years (until you're 95 if you retire at age 65) and that's with no interest paid on that final amount on deposit!
If you bought an annuity and it paid 4% per year, you'd have a lifetime income of $2,976.40 per month.
Another thing with me.... I have two deceased husbands who died in their 50's, (one was 51 and the other one was 59 before one percent of their social security could be drawn.
I worked all my life and am drawing 100% on my own social security).
Their S.S. money will never have one cent drawn from what they paid into S.S. all their lives.
THE FOLKS IN WASHINGTON HAVE PULLED OFF A BIGGER PONZI SCHEME THAN BERNIE MADOFF EVER DID.
Entitlement my foot, I paid cash for my social security insurance!
Just because they borrowed the money for other government spending, doesn't make my benefits some kind of charity or handout!!
Remember Congressional benefits? --- free healthcare, outrageous retirement packages, 67 paid holidays, three weeks paid vacation, unlimited paid sick days.
Now that's welfare, and they have the nerve to call my social security retirement payments entitlements?
We're "broke" and we can't help our own Seniors, Veterans, Orphans, or Homeless.
They call Social Security and Medicare an entitlement even though most of us have been paying for it all our working lives, and now, when it's time for us to collect, the government is running out of money.
Why did the government borrow from it in the first place?
It was supposed to be in a locked box, not part of the general fund.
Sad isn't it.

Why Lincoln Tipped His Hat

A gentleman is courteous and considerate of everyone who crosses his path, if that is possibe, and that includes those who are in no position to do him any good. When Abraham Lincoln was asked why he would tip his hat to a man who was a disreputable bum and no gentleman Lincoln replied "because I am".
If someone is rude to waiters, barbers and the like I know that he would just as soon be rude to me if it served his purposes.

Ronald Wilson Reagan

 

Thought for the Day

The true value of a human being is determined primarily by the measure and the sense in which he has attained liberation from the self.
Albert Einstein

I See You

Nap Time

 

Thoughts

 The third grade level of discussion about religion and God's creation of and purposes for man which appear in many popular publications may be amusing but they are also frequently pathetic.  From the agnostic or atheistic view they usually depend on something about the age of the earth or its flatness or roundness, as if they had offered some serious profundity.  Yes, though there are some fundamentalists, Christians and others, who believe that the Bible asserts 6,000 years on the first point and, at one time, flatness on the second, most Christians do not know or care about the earth's age and never thought it was anything but round.  (The views of those who opt for recent and flat should be respected, not ridiculed, however mistaken most of us believe them to be).

     Serious subjects exist about God's creation and man's purposes on earth, and for Christians about Jesus Christ's redemptive mission, but they have nothing to do with primitive but honest beliefs in principles of science, which is not what the Bible is about anyway.  (I note in passing, however, that  science and religion have been moving closer together even since the Big Bang was conceded in l965).  Unfortunately a lot of people, knowing nothing about real science, think themselves sophisticated thinkers by talking about Salem witches or the views of some priest in the year 1200.

Thought for the Day --- Omar's Lament

Thought for the Day --- Omar's Lament

Indeed the idols I have loved so long
     Have done my credit in this world much wrong
Have drowned my honour in a shallow cup
     And sold my reputation for a song
                     
                                           Omar Khayyam