Author: Ty Keenum

I am put in mind of one of the phrases of one of my favorite writers, Molly Ivins. Molly use to cover politics from Austin, Texas. Molly was one of the most gifted, insightful writers I’ve ever read. The fact that she used humor to skewer the politicians was a double bonus for me.

One of the phrases that Molly used to describe the actions of a politician who had gotten in deeper to a situation than was prudent was, “Poor old so and so, he’s forgotten the first rule of holes; when you’re in one, quit digging.” Molly made her point with the simple logic that everyone could understand. She applied the logic with warm hearted humor that made even the roasted politicians laugh at themselves. Molly Ivins was a national treasure in a state that was diametrically opposed to her politically. I miss her.

In the spirit of Molly Ivins, I’d like to say to Matt Gaetz, “quit digging”. Trying to figure out which hole the Mattster is in at this point in time is a bit of a guess, since he’s been digging a new one about every hour for the last few days. In case you haven’t caught the news in the last few weeks, I’ll hit a few of the Mattster’s highlights.

1. Has become a target of the DOJ for obstruction of justice in the investigation of his friend Joel Greenberg. Politico reports: “The witness in question was one of a handful of women who entered Gaetz’s orbit via his one-time “wingman,” former Seminole County, Fla. tax collector Joel Greenberg, who pleaded guilty last month to a host of crimes, including sex-trafficking a 17-year-old in 2017.”

2. Passes off his high life partying as just being a “generous partner”. In an interview with Axios, Gaetz  defended himself by saying, “The allegations of sexual misconduct against me are false.” When asked what the DOJ probe could be about, he added, “I have definitely, in my single days, provided for women I’ve dated. You know, I’ve paid for flights, for hotel rooms. I’ve been, you know, generous as a partner. I think someone is trying to make that look criminal when it is not.” The girl in question was 17 at the time.

3. Considers himself more of a “player” than a representative of the people. From an ABC article: on the Mattster’s dedication to his work as a congressman, “While on Capitol Hill as a member of Congress, Gaetz allegedly boasted of his sexual encounters with women, and would allegedly try to show colleagues photos and videos of naked women he said he slept with, according to sources familiar with Gaetz’s actions“.

4. While a congressman in the Florida state house, the Mattster was part of a group of young male lawmakers who created a “game” to score their female sexual conquests, which granted “points” for various targets such as interns, staffers or other female colleagues in the state House. One of the targets of the scoring system was a group the lawmakers had heard were “virgins,” according to a source. The scoring system by male Florida lawmakers was previously reported by the Miami Herald.

4. Is now on a “stir up the crazies tour” with embattled loony tune Marjorie Taylor Greene. The tour is named “America First” which was originally floated as a name for a caucus in the House. The name was “cancelled” after it leaked out that the language forming the caucus invoked white nationalism.

I don’t know how to suss through all of this. Have we ever had a congressman neck deep in a child sex trafficking investigation? How does a man that bears a striking resemblance to the character Butthead, and apparently the same basic urges, get elected or re-elected? Does the Mattster believe that women should vote for him because he’s always been “generous with his girlfriends”?

It seems like Gaetz’s behavior would fall under the “DO NOT EVER” rules 1-10 from your campaign adviser. I am reminded of Edwin Edwards who once said, “The only way I can lose this election is if I’m caught in bed with either a dead girl or a live boy”. Unlike Matt Gaetz, Edwin Edwards knew he was supposed to avoid those conditions, not embrace them.

As a loyal Democrat let me say, “Please, please, please let Matt Gaetz be the Republican nominee for president in 2024”.

I guess thinking about apocalyptic situations consumes about fifty percent of the American zeitgeist now. Maybe it’s more. I’m not seeing anybody doing any studies on it. If there are studies being done as to why we are so consumed with bad news, the reports are not being published. At least in any media I’ve found. I suspect that those whose financial well being would be negatively impacted by such a report are controlling all of the news outlets.

Crazy as it sounds, it’s like all businesses out there benefit from our fears. Whether it’s based on the fear of getting a zit, or the fear of being gun downed at a concert, all advertising seems to exist to manipulate our fears. Now, I admit, there is a wide chasm between worrying if our face will clear up in time for the big dance and getting gunned down at the dance, but the marketing is basically the same.

The drug companies at least have a bit of a constraint placed on them by the FDA. If you’re having a little acne problem, and you’re thinking about a solution, at least the makers of the drugs have to tell you about their side effects in the advertising. I’m not sure how many folks objectively weigh the choices laid out in drug advertising. How many teenagers have said, “I’d rather die than go to the dance with my face like this”. At least with the FDA restriction on advertising, you know that dying might be a possibility. Not so with the purchase of a gun.

I hear the collective groan, “Now you’ve crossed a line”. Let me ask you when was the last time you saw any mention anywhere of what the proliferation of weapons in our society has done? Never. You’re likely to see an ad on all of the merits of owning a high capacity semi-automatic hunting rifle, ‘Guaranteed to bring home a kill, even if you’re blind‘. You’re never going to be presented with the “side effects” of gun ownership, as you would in a drug ad. 

The Gun Violence Archive reports there have been 58,807 incidents of gun violence in the U.S. in 2020, resulting in 39,427 injuries and 19,380 deaths. I had to Google that. In the time of full blown Covid and stay at home orders, we still managed to shoot nearly 59,000 people. Admittedly in 2020 Covid was the big killer, but shouldn’t somebody have been talking about the other grim reaper in our midst? Bashing guns, or actually reporting accurately on the effects of guns on our society, seems to run counter to the “fear formula”.

What is the “fear formula”?  I think it can be best exemplified by what happened after the Sandy Hook shootings. If you don’t recall Sandy Hook, on December 14, 2012, in Newtown, Connecticut, a nutjob with a gun killed 20 children and 6 adults. To me, seeing children being gunned down should have been the wake up call needed to do something like Australia did. Instead, gun sales went up by as much as 60% after the shooting.

Sturm, Ruger & Co., the largest publicly traded gunmaker, saw its net sales for the first nine months of 2013 jump 44 percent to $506.4 million, from $350 million in the same period a year before. Think about that, children are being gunned down in their schools, and our solution is to buy more guns. Why? Well, the head of the N.R.A. tells us that what’s needed to stop bad men with guns, is good men with guns.

Not to call the scummy sleazeball Wayne LaPierre a lying scumbag, but here are a couple of interesting facts that don’t support his assertion.

In America, there are approximately 393 million firearms possessed by civilians, 1.2 guns for each man, woman and child. That sounds like a lot of guns. Of those guns, approximately 700,000 of them are in the hands of law enforcement officers. The numbers make it sound like the police are horribly outgunned, but as it turns out just 3% of American adults own a collective 133 million firearms. Three percent of the population own one third of the guns. There must be some serious armories being built out there.

So, I guess not enough “good men” are getting their hands on guns. The manufacturers are doing their part. There were 9,052,628 new guns manufactured in the U.S. in 2020. 70 million firearms have been manufactured since 2008. Those guns have accounted for 17,510 Americans being the victims of gun-related violence so far in 2021 and 410 of the victims are children. Where were the good men with a gun that LaPierre is counting on to protect us?

Let’s be real here, we have a serious, serious problem. It’s not fundamentalists of whatever persuasion, as the news agencies and the gun lobby want you to believe, it’s fundamentalists with guns. Take their guns away and then we can at least argue the merits of their beliefs.

By the way, George W. Bush, that great moralist, took away the ability to sue gun manufacturers for their “side effects” back in 2005. The Dickey Amendment prevented the CDC from studying the effects of gun violence on the health of Americans. So much for that Republican value of accountability.

Now the N.R.A. is trying to hide behind bankruptcy to avoid their culpability in the slaughter of innocent Americans. And for what, so that Wayne LaPierre could spend $300,000 on a few suits?

The N.R.A., no regulations allowed since 1871.

Ok, spoiler alert, this is probably not going to be one of my happier reports. I come to this somber discussion quite innocently, though. I was listening to the radio, good old WNCW out of Spindale, N.C. A song came on that just sent my mind a tumbling. The song was, “The Trouble With Drinking, Is, It Ain’t No Trouble At All”. I know that probably all truth can be revealed by listening to country songs, from Mommas, to dogs, to prison, to trains, Jesus and girlfriends. I don’ t think I’ve ever had such truth revealed to me as those simple lyrics, “The Trouble With Drinking, Is, It Ain’t No Trouble At All’.

Now, I realize there’s nuances within the message, like, “it ain’t no trouble” because it is socially acceptable. From the “Mad Men” of the 50’s celebrating their achievements with martini lunches, to the factory workers filing into bars for a few shots at the end of the day, to the average Joe picking up a six pack of beer to drink on the drive home, it is socially acceptable to drink. In fact, one could say that drinking is encouraged.

The alcohol industry spends about $2 billion per year on all media advertising. The beer brewing industry spent more than $770 million on television ads and $15 million on radio ads in 2000, all by itself. That’s a lot of suds. Maybe Budweiser can send the Clydesdales out on a promo tour to all of the hospitals in America where people are dying from cancers of the mouth, throat, voice box, esophagus, liver, breast, and colon-rectal region. I’m sure the folks suffering from cirrhosis of the liver will get a big kick out of seeing the Clydesdales play football in person before going to their final reward.

I know that family attitude has a lot to do with the, “it ain’t no trouble” component of drinking. Even within the rather homogeneous structure of the “average American family”, there are different levels of acceptance of drinking. Some families consider the fact that you can serve in the military at eighteen, but not drink until you’re twenty one, as being odious. Some families see the age of twelve as the time of passage when a child can be “safely” given a “little” wine with dinner. Some folks are so darn happy their kids are away at college so they don’t have to deal with them coming home drunk that they’re willing to turn a blind eye to the activity. “They’re going to drink anyway, I’m just glad they’re not on the roads”, is the mindset.

Sadly, we’re just pushing the solution to the next generation. Study after study has confirmed that the earlier you start drinking, the earlier you will experience problems. Those problems will become chronic, and I’ll just go ahead and say it, the drinker will become an alcoholic. Now, some drinkers won’t become raging lunatics that beat their wives and destroy property, but many will.

In 2013, the number of alcohol related traffic deaths in the United States was over 10,000. In fact, the CDC reports that: “Excessive alcohol use led to approximately 95,158 deaths and 2.8 million years of potential life lost (YPLL) each year in the United States from 2011 – 2015, shortening the lives of those who died by an average of 29 years. Further, excessive drinking was responsible for 1 in 10 deaths among working-age adults aged 20-64 years. The economic costs of excessive alcohol consumption in 2010 were estimated at $249 billion, or $2.05 a drink.”

Think about that, 2.8 million years of potential life lost. That’s an awful lot of taxes that aren’t getting collected due to our collective turning of a blind eye to one of the leading causes of death in our society. Seems like Congress would jump all over that. Of course, they would have to weigh public good against political contributions. Oh well, I guess we’ll just have to wait for the insurance companies to do the heavy lifting, like they did with tobacco.

Until then, “The Trouble With Drinking, Is, It Ain’t No Trouble At All”.

The free state of Israel has long held a pivotal point in the prophecies outlined in the book of Revelations in the Bible. Should the United States treatment of a country, or the countries surrounding a particular country, be based on their religious affiliation? Should the  narcissistic world-view of those who would be vindicated in their beliefs by creating Armageddon be given preference over peace loving people? Let’s hope not.

This week has been another round of bomb lobbing in the Middle East with civilians bearing the brunt of the mayhem. We all know the leaders are secure in their bunkers plotting future mischief while the ordinary citizens are just trying to make it through the day. Go to work, buy groceries, worry about catching Covid without the threat of watching their children being blown up. Do Israeli and Arab parents want anything less than a peaceful day for their children? Why this behavior is acceptable because of the religious overtones defies logic.

Imagine if Mississippi, the least Catholic state launched an attack on Massachusetts, one of the more Catholic states, “just because”. There would have to be some provocation of course, perhaps the Governor of Massachusetts made a public statement that Mississippi hangs at the bottom of literacy in the United States. The Governor of Massachusetts might pontificate that Baptists want their kids to grow up ignorant, while the enlightened Catholics of Massachusetts educate their children. The next thing you know minivans with “My Kid Is An Honor Roll Student At Milton Elementary” are catching incoming rounds launched from Biloxi.  Sounds crazy?

Crazy is the Dahiya doctrine, which Israel has employed since 2006 to justify retaliating against transgressions with hundred fold force. The Goldstone Report concluding that the Israeli strategy was “designed to punish, humiliate and terrorize a civilian population”. Princeton professor Richard Falk wrote that under the doctrine, “The civilian infrastructure of adversaries such as Hamas or Hezbollah are treated as permissible military targets, which is not only an overt violation of the most elementary norms of the law of war and of universal morality, but an avowal of a doctrine of violence that needs to be called by its proper name: state terrorism.”

Meanwhile, we here in the United States allow our representatives to keep propping up Israel because of some arcane idea that we’re only going to get to meet Jesus if we help make the book of Revelations come true. Are there any other possible solutions that don’t involve world destruction?

How about the merging of Israel and its neighbors into a Middle East Union, like the members of the European Union? Like the Middle East, the nations of Europe have been at war almost since they could fling rocks at each other.  In the interest of peace and a shared prosperity, couldn’t the religious factions of the Middle East put down their swords? Would the concept of a Middle East Union be fostered as an idea to promote peace in the area, or would it be viewed by the religious wackadoodles as a threat to the prophesies?

If our representatives are truly representing we the people, and not following the dictates of a special interest group, they will choose science over belief, reality over prophesy. We have the power to make sure they make the right choice. The elections are coming up again in 2022. Let’s put peace in the Middle East with dignity for all religious groups on the ballot.

Sadly, the Donald is still in the news. The Donald has developed his own “twitter” to continue displaying his total ignorance and/or lack of regard for the Constitution. I can’t take credit for using the low hanging fruit analogy when talking about the Donald. As both Jon Stewart and David Letterman decided to retire at the same time that the Donald announced his candidacy, both comics bemoaned the timing of their decisions. They both knew that their nightly routines would be pre-written for them by the dumb stuff the Donald was going to do. Let me reinforce, the Donald does not disappoint unless you’re talking about being guaranteed your Constitutional rights and the promise of a democracy.

Let’s discuss the right to assemble and the right of free speech. Now the Founding Fathers, whom the Repubs seem to hold in such high regard, held the right of free speech and the right to assemble so highly themselves that they put them right there in the First Amendment. Numero Uno, right up there with “thou shalt not kill” of Commandment fame. The current core of the Republican party believe First Amendment rights are only important if it’s the Donald’s speech. The First Amendment does not apply if your free speech and your right to assemble are used to heckle the Donald. In fact, the Donald might be obliged to encourage the crowd to “rough up” a person who would dare interrupt the Donald. Speaking out against the Donald will get even a congressperson roughed up. 

To be fair, like all megalomaniacs before him, the Donald expects everyone in the crowd to hang on his every word, drawing from his flower the nectar of their existence. If the gift of the Donald is not appreciated, it is perfectly understandable by the Donald if the group collective wants to use force to oust the unappreciative. I won’t be obvious by playing the “H” card here, but let’s just say we have history with this type of behavior from a charismatic orator.

Let’s talk immigration which is in the biggest mess it’s ever been in thanks to the Donald’s xenophobia and desire to be the “cool guy” to the Klan. Build a wall, build a wall, and oh by the way, could we track all of the Muslims? Equally important as tracking the Muslims is losing track of the parents and children separated at the border. His human rights violations have ironically provided a Thundershirt for the Donald.

No, really, it’s the only way the Donald can get himself to sleep at night. First his hot bath, and then, being dressed in his sleepers with feet and a trap door in the back for convenience, he is served his warm Ovaltine. With covers pulled up tightly under his chin, the Donald is then ready to be read his favorite bedtime story, “Trump Is A Giant Peach”, which details the pain suffered by others due to the Donald’s time in the Oval Office. Only after the detailed reading of the activities of each and every human rights violation have been read to the Donald can he sleep peacefully. It sounds like a long, long night for the reader of the night time story, famed broadcaster, Garrison Keillor.

Facebook did the right thing this week and continued the Trump ban. It was EXTREMELY painful for the arbiter of free speech that allows billions of people to babble tirelessly on any topic. The Facebook board seemed to draw the line at the violent overthrow of our country. There were probably actuarials in the room calculating the present loss of income compared to the future loss of income when a dictator decided he didn’t need to pay for your services anymore.

For those of us being diagnosed as having Trump Derangement Syndrome, I can’t tell you how calming the first one hundred days of Biden’s administration have been. Statistics bear out that misinformation has declined on the internet by 73% since the banning of the Donald. Isn’t accurate information delivered to us in a calm manner something we should all demand from our elected officials?

So, I’ve given the Donald a social media bump this week by exposing him to the expanse of my wide readership. Like I said, sometimes you have to pick the low hanging fruit.

Our dear friends in the Republican party are doing their best to prove that what’s good for one, isn’t always, good for the other, on a national scale. The Republican leader in the house and some of his membership are not getting along publicly. It seems that the dissenters are opposed to the violent overthrow of our government. What an unusual spot to draw a line in the sand.

Say what you will about the Republicans, and there’s a lot that can be said, they have always been unified in their message, no matter how crazy that message might be. The Republican party has always been like a party of lemmings. Once the head lemming starts heading for the cliff, all of the lemmings rush in that direction. While it’s true that some lemmings like to be first at the cliff’s edge, Ted Cruz, Gym Jordan, Little Marco and the current group of freshman like Georgia’s own Marjorie Taylor Greene, it has held true that dissent from the party line was not only dissuaded, but would be punished. The Republicans have always been unified in their message to the public.

Democrats on the other hand can be best described as like herding cats. Will Rogers famously said, “I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat.” A party that is inclusive of a diverse group of peoples and philosophies is going to have trouble forming a message that everyone can get lockstep behind. It’s just the nature of people who are more comfortable thinking for themselves then being told what to think. Now the Republican leadership is getting push back from members who object to being told what they saw. It seems that at least ten Republican house members saw a violent insurrection on January 6, 2021. No amount of appeals to party unity has been able to get them to change their story.

Since the appeals didn’t work, threats and shunning are now being employed to get the wandering lemmings back into the pack. The fact that one of the wanderers is being threatened with the loss of her role in party leadership is indicative of how serious the Republicans are in trying to whitewash the events of January 6th.

Now the problem with lying in the digital age is that there are lots and lots of files out there that are evidence, like this video. The video gives us a true picture of how the members of congress, Republicans and Democrats felt about the threat. Sadly it only took a few hours before most of the Republican members of congress were able to deny “their lying eyes” and lock back into the “big lie” being told by the Republican party.

When is a lie too big to follow? Apparently the daughter of Darth Vader thinks the party that her family has shaped for decades is about to go past the point of no return. There are certain indiscretions that can be glossed over; like if Dick Cheney knew anybody at Halliburton prior to the Iraq invasion. Lies that are being told to prop up a deranged failed TV star seem too big a reach for Ms. Cheney. God love her.

Liz Cheney knows who to blame for the insurrection and seems to want to wind up on the right side of history and democracy. Let’s hope she’s as tough as her old man and that pressure from the Trump apologists don’t cause her to compromise her principles. Listening to the Republicans whine about the way they’re being treated in the press for attempting to overthrow democracy is laughable. Sort of.

There’s a ton of things that are different in small towns from big cities. The topic for today is policing. I grew up watching Andy Griffin of Mayberry fame. While his character is based on a true life character, most folks believe a policeman with strong ties to the community is a fiction. Not true.

Sheriff’s in small towns are elected, and, as a result, are known by the community they serve. More importantly, they know the members of their community. I suspect that has more to do with how criminals are handled in the smaller communities than in the cities. When was the last time you heard of a small town sheriff rolling up to a report of a kid playing with a toy gun and opening fire in three seconds? Never. In a small town, the sheriff would have likely rolled up, told the kid to quit acting a fool or he’d tell his Momma. The sheriff would probably mention the kid’s Momma’s name, just to drive home his point.

I get it, we don’t all live in small towns where everybody knows everybody’s name. That said, I feel a national effort to humanize suspects is in order. The dynamics change when you view a “perp”, or my favorite, “un-sub”, as a daddy, mommy, son or daughter. The preservation of life should be the absolute first order of business for the police, even if it means that occasionally they’ll get their uniform a little dirty. A life should have a higher value than a cleaning bill, right?

The police are so over-equipped with gadgetry that is designed to disable suspects, I think they feel cheated if don’t get to use their toys. It has been reported that there have been 1,081 deaths due to tasering in the United States through 2018. What do all of these dead subjects have in common? They were all unarmed.

So, are there other methods available to police that are possibly less lethal to use? Of course. Most countries use the baton as the method of choice. The baton allows the officer to apply a proportional amount of force to a situation while not running the risk of killing a suspect who might be endangered by other methods, such as pepper spray. Since 1990, there have been 60 in-custody deaths in which pepper spray was a contributing factor. In-custody deaths. Pepper spray is not just an irritant to an asthmatic, it’s a death sentence.

To what can we attribute the over use of force in America by the police? I believe the police are scared to death. I’m not ready to cynically say that they all are a bunch of neo-Nazis. I think they’re scared, and out of that fear, overreact. I jokingly say that if all police are scared to death of black men, then maybe only black men should be police. The over-policing of the black community suggests an overreaction.

Do the police have reason to overreact? In my opinion, and a study done by the CDC, no. According to figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the FBI, “In America, more preschoolers are shot dead each year (82 in 2013) than police officers are in the line of duty (27 in 2013) ” Let that one soak in for a while. You are three times more likely to be killed by gunfire, if you are a preschooler than if you are a policeman. Something is clearly out of whack here, and the answer is not that we need to up armor the kids.

To me, the answer is the sense of community the police officer needs to have, and the training in non-lethal methods. It’s not sexy, and it doesn’t move billions of dollars worth of military weapons to the police, but it could work. It works everywhere else. Don’t spare the rod, and save the child.

 

One of those areas where facts get in the way of perception is the notion that raising the age of retirement is the only solution needed to fix a secure future for the elderly. It’s true, the longer you’re able to provide for yourself the better you should be. Social Security even tilts the retirement income to a higher monthly stipend if you wait until age 70 to begin withdrawing benefits.

The reality is that if you start your benefits at 70, it will take you 13 years to “earn” back the money you would have been drawing if you started at age 66. It is simple math. The extra couple of hundred dollars a month looks attractive, particularly if you were planning on working to 70 anyway, but, if you want to get the maximum from your benefit, retire at the minimum full retirement age. Keep working as long as you are able. Changes brought about during the Obama administration greatly raised the amount of income a retiree can earn before being taxed on the income. Good policy for a host of reasons.

The first question you should ask when you’re deciding to wait until 70 to take retirement is “how many of my family members have made it passed 83?” Weigh that answer with your general health before making your decision. Also throw in the fact that the Social Security system uses your last five years average earnings as an index to your monthly benefit.

That last little tidbit is a hook into a greater societal problem that Congress, et al seem to be completely oblivious to. It has been my observation that when the workforce approaches age 50, the worker’s usefulness is under extreme scrutiny in most work environments. Replacing an aging worker with his higher associated costs of salary, health insurance and possibly retirement, with a younger model is very attractive idea to management. It happens everyday in America. While there are ageism laws in place to prevent it from happening, I’ve never heard of anyone successfully mounting a case.

So now, you’ve got an aging worker with his higher salary expectations, higher health care costs, turned loose on the job market. For those middle age workers that are able to make the transition successfully, I say, God love you, you are the exception. For the most part, the aging worker takes lower and lower salaried jobs, if he can find a job, until he retires. As you can see, not supporting the ageism laws helps reduce the Social Security outlay because of the indexing factor. The “unwritten policy” of not enforcing the ageism laws is so blatant that even the Bureau of U.S. Labor and Statistics don’t even track age groups after age 52. The message is clear, they’re old, let them fend for themselves.

Now I am not naive, I know that for new workers to have a job, older workers have to step aside. I know that for folks out there wondering if they’re ever going to get Junior with his degree in English Literature out of their basement, there has to be a job. I’m just saying there has to be a better way.

Getting old ain’t for the faint hearted, I tell you. Stick around long enough and you’ll see for yourself.

It’s funny, most of the stuff I do these days is, “just in case”. While we’re in our twenties and thirties we didn’t think too much about “just in case”. We had plenty of time. While the politicians have been telling us forever that Social Security was going to die, we had time when we were younger to change course and plan for our future. Now that I’m past sixty, I find it’s not that easy to chart another course.

“Just in case” Social Security does die, what plans do I have? None. I guess I’ve always believed that the politicians would never be stupid enough to screw with retirees. In fact, I’ve bet my future on it. As we old timers become a bigger and bigger demographic, and all of us baby boomers are retiring, the politicians want to blame the “imminent” failure of the system on us. Now, I’m no rocket scientist, but I can do my times and goes-intos. Seems to me that back in the early fifties somebody in charge should have been doing their math homework and doing some projections on how much money would be needed based off of births and deaths. For a point of reference, find any actuarial and pick his brain. I mean, if an insurance actuarial can calculate how to payout a $10,000 burial policy for a premium of $9.99 a month, and make a profit, Social Security should be child’s play.

In fact, it’s the children playing with Social Security that have been the problem. The children I’m referring to is Congress. Over the years, members of both parties have borrowed money from the Social Security Trust Fund, and not repaid it. The amount that can be “borrowed” from Social Security for other programs is now calculated at 2.9 trillion dollars. This was money generated from our payroll taxes and during many years, resulted in a surplus. As is its nature, Congress abhors a surplus, and Congress promptly converted the money to wars, vacations and gym equipment. While performing this sleight of hand, the conservative shills publicly called out all of the current and future recipients as communists. How dare we expect the government to give us back the money they’ve been taking from us for forty plus years?

In sad truth, much of this vitriol has stuck with the younger generations, and they fully expect that Social Security will not be there for them when they need it. I don’t know if they expect the payroll deductions to stop first, or not. I do know that one little change to the system will keep it healthy through 2065, and no, it doesn’t involve carnage to Congress. By removing the limit on the Annual Social Security Wage Base Limit, Social Security gets well. Currently it’s capped at $142,800 in wages per year, but there’s a whole bunch of folks making more than that. Of course, that’s the folks that already think they’re paying more than their share. The Donald should be happy to pay taxes on his full income, after all, the folks working at Burger King do. Adjusting the tax rate from 6.2 to 7.0 would work as well, it’s all about wanting to preserve the system.

Conservatives don’t want to preserve the Social Security system for a couple of reasons. First, what conservative wants the largest example of socialism in the world to be working? Kind of cuts across the grain of a conservative. Next, is the movement by the conservatives to hand Social Security to Wall Street. The most recent attempt at privatization was by “W” back in 2005. Dubya talked about it all of the time. I mean, what if all of that income was put someplace that was not guaranteed by the government, someplace that was super safe for the elders, you know, like the stock market? We all know how the stock market favors the average uninformed investor, what could go wrong?

I don’t think it will happen, but I guess I need to start on my “just in case” plan. It’s probably going to involve a Mason jar and a hole in the back yard.

We’ve had a bit of inconvenience today from a large pine tree falling over the power line that feeds our electricity here to the house. Trees and limbs and whose responsibility it is to keep things trimmed away from power lines has filled our morning conversation. All of this tree talk put me in mind of the old adage about, “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”

Well, of course it would. The laws of physics are not suspended because there’s no one there to record the event. The fact that a sound unrecorded doesn’t mean that the sound didn’t occur, spring boarded my brain into thinking about sights that previously have gone unrecorded.

I’m talking about the police wearing body cameras. Let me tell you, I’m a big, big fan. I’m a big believer that the guilty must do their penance. That said, and I’m admitting I’m a sinner, I believe all law enforcement everywhere should wear body cameras. I also believe there should be strong penalties to personnel who, “forget to turn the camera on”, or suffer “malfunctions”.

We have the opportunity now to correct a lot of wrongs that have been perpetrated by the folks who are pledged to “protect and serve”. I realize I am painting with a very broad brush, but I’m going to keep on stroking. Since the police reflect the society they are drawn from, that means that some of them are going to be scared to death all of the time, some of them are abusers of power, some of them are physically unfit for the job, some of them are psychologically unfit for the job, and hopefully, most of them are qualified, good public servants. I’m hoping the body cameras weeds out all but the best, with a minimum of civilian carnage during the process.

In case you think I have wildly overstated the problem, let me relate two recent items in the news. The first is the very disturbing body cam footage of a suspect who was being brought to the hospital by the police for a drug issue. The suspect was handcuffed behind the back and posed no threat to the officers. The footage shows the suspect being tasered over twenty times by the three offices while at the front door of the hospital. From the footage, you see no physical threat to the officers. You do see three white officers and one large black suspect.

Previous to body cams, both sides would have to tell their side of the story in court. In this case, suspect dies en route to jail, and so his side of the story would have never been told without the body cams. Why the officers decided to take the suspect to jail instead of leave him at the hospital for treatment, which was their original destination, will be one of the many questions they will have to answer.

My second news item relates to the murder trial of George Floyd, the man killed by police for passing a counterfeit twenty dollar bill. The new part of the footage for me was seeing the police take a suspect that was handcuffed and in the back of a police car and drag him back out into the street to inflict further punishment and eventually death on the suspect. The real time footage was so disturbing that a 911 operator monitoring the neighborhood surveillance camera called her supervisor to send a police supervisor to the scene.

The body cams and a whole bunch of cell phones caught the murder in real time. As the trial proceeds we find that there were a LOT of cameras taking video of the murder. The accused can do nothing but watch his misdeed over and over again as witness after witness is called to testify as to what they saw.

Weeding out the unfit for service is what I’m hoping the body cams will do for society. Whether it’s psychologically or physically, society deserves nothing but the best from their police.

As we’re finding in the Derek Chauvin trial, if a tree falls in front of a body cam, we’ll hear it.