Something To Think About Archive

With all the hoopla in Minnesota over defrauded taxpayers, costing the federal government billions, let’s not forget California with its own problems where Unemployment Insurance reportedly lost $30 billion to fraud during COVID and continues to lose hundreds of millions of dollars annually. The Electronic Benefit Transfer program of CalFresh and CalWORKS has been losing $251 million annually to fraud while MediCal made $1.9 billion in overpayments to providers. And let’s not forget the high-speed rail to nowhere now estimated to cost up to $128 billion versus the original budget in 2008 of $33 billion. And there’s no end in sight.

Poet James Russell Lowell once observed that “The misfortunes hardest to bear are those that never come.”

Painter Edward Hopper believed that “No amount of skillful invention can replace the essential element of imagination.”

As baseball great Hank Aaron once noted, “Playing in the big leagues wasn’t nearly as hard as getting there.”

Thomas Jefferson called “Honesty” “…the first chapter in the book of wisdom.”

Still thinking about the proposed and ill-conceived ”Billionaire’s Tax”, we recall Calvin Coolidge’s belief that “The power to tax is the power to destroy.”

It’s interesting to watch Democrats and some Republicans fret over the recent arrest of Nicolas Maduro who has been indicted in a New York court on drug trafficking charges. It’s worth noting that Democrats criticized the first Trump Administration for not doing enough to get Maduro out of power and Biden even increased the bounty on Maduro for information leading to his arrest. But, regime change, no matter how oppressive or illegal a government is; and nation building, no matter how well-intended; has never ended well or with an improved outcome for that country. As former Secretary of State Colin Powell once observed, “You break it, you own it.”

Self-made steel magnate Andrew Carnegie advised us to “Do your duty and a little more and the future will take care of itself.”

Poet Samuel Coleridge claimed that “The happiness of life is made up of minute fractions.”

Writer Ann Patchett says that “…the best vacation is the one that relieves me of my own life for a while and then makes me long for it again.

According to author and ethicist Gus Lee “Courage is addressing wrongs in the face of fear regardless of consequences of risk to self or of potential practical gains.”

Novelist and photographer Eudora Welty said: “Never think you’ve seen the last of anything.”

Mitt Romney, himself a successful and wealthy man, recently called for higher income taxes on the so-called “Rich” in exchange for entitlement reform. While we’ve usually agreed with his politics, we’d point out that according to the nonpartisan Tax Foundation, in 2022, the top 1% paid 40% of total income taxes. Meanwhile, the bottom 50% paid only 3% of all income taxes. We’ve always claimed that government in general has a spending problem rather than an income problem, and we’re certainly not advocating that the bottom 50% pay more in taxes; but Governor Romney knows this: The government often promises reform but seldom if ever delivers, no matter what carrot they are offered.

Analyst and early Enron skeptic John E. Olson claimed that “It is axiomatic on Wall Street that if a stock price is rising arithmetically, management egos tend to rise exponentially.”

Goethe said: “The way you see people is the way you treat them and the way you treat them is what they become.”

It’s been said that “Although death and taxes are inevitable, death doesn’t get worse every time Congress meets.”

Scottish essayist Thomas Carlyle once noted that “A person with a clear purpose will make progress on even the toughest road. A person with no purpose will make no progress on even the smoothest road.”

English writer Izaak Walton believed that “Health is a blessing that money cannot buy.”

Jonas Salk, inventor of the polio vaccine felt that “…the greatest reward for doing is the opportunity to do more.” We hope that current trend of the FDA’s push back on and slowing down of the development of medicines, in particular vaccines, is done in a fact-based environment. We are particularly concerned about the elevated claims of ties to autism, a claim that has never been proven.  We also can’t help but note that the current HHS Secretary RFK, Jr, as a lawyer, has profited enormously from his involvement with class action litigation against drug and vaccine makers.

Civil Rights activist A. Philip Randolph Claimed that “Freedom is never given; it is won.”