Odds & Ends

It’s one of those days I want to clean out some quotes I ran across but have yet to do anything with.  So topics today will be highly varied.

First, from an unknown author:

            “You don’t need religion to have morals.

             If you can’t determine right from wrong, then you lack empathy, not religion.”

I’m not certain empathy is the defining characteristic here but morals do not automatically follow from religion. Nor is religion always moral. Morality emanates from a fine tuned sense of right and wrong and keeping one’s eyes on just that. Converging this with real world living conditions is most difficult. Discernment of truth in the midst of chaos is a challenge. Perhaps empathy – seeing the world thru the eyes of others – is a major element in discernment. It helps with a grasp of the moral. Either way hard work is required of us in these matters.

Second, from www.someecards.com:

           

            “The Constitution is a lot like the Bible in that you have a lot of idiots

             Who've obviously never read it, but still try to tell you what it says.”

Both the Constitution and the Bible are complicated wordy documents of history. To understand them is to understand the history from which they emanated. It takes hard work and concentration. It is work not for the lazy or undisciplined. Accordingly, ask for credentials before believing what is said by someone about either document.

Third, from Senator Bernie Sanders, (I-Vt):

“The obscene and increasing level of wealth and income inequality in this country is immoral, un-American and unsustainable.”

I think this is true. The key word is unsustainable. From a policy point of view sustainability is of critical importance. To imagine the current condition as automatically successful on a sustainable basis is to not understand economics. The ideologues will state the opposite. But then they do not have the training of a degreed economist.

Over the ages history has proven to us that the common good and shared standard of living among all people is the consistent ingredient of long term healthy economics. Our current circumstance is anything but. The poor get poorer; the rich get richer; the middle class disappears. Soon there will be no consumers for the middle product lines from which most wealth originates. Think about it.

Fourth, anonymous shares with us this thought:

“Any lawmaker, while making a six-figure salary, receiving a Cadillac benefits package and becoming a millionaire from being in office, who tells the poor, the disabled and the disadvantaged that they must make sacrifices has no business as a legislator or being called a decent human being.”

Really now!  A congressman earns close to $200,000 per year, has paid holidays, vacation, sick time and health insurance benefits. The health insurance is top notch at little or no cost to them, without deductible and with no life-time limits on payout. Their coverage is the dream of most citizens. On top of all that they get retirement benefits equal to their annual salary for life; did I say life? Yes I did! 

Do you have this kind of salary and benefit package?  And don’t forget a biggie: congress people have expense allowances that pay for their staff, office space at home, in district and in Washington. They have travel benefits that most of us would love to have and business trips that take them all over the globe without much relevance to their job responsibilities.

Yet these people have the gall to judge the rest of us and what we should be granted in benefits from benefit programs we pay for in the first place, not them.

My solution to this egregious imbalance is to provide congressmen and senators with the very same benefits we get as citizens: social security benefits, Medicare and Medicaid program benefits, the whole nine yards. If we pay for them, so should they. If our benefits are less than theirs, then theirs should be shrunk to our benefit scale.

The sacrifice they should make is a given! We already make those sacrifices.

I could go on with these odds and ends but I think you've had enough for one session.  Meanwhile I’ll save up some more for a future session.  Until then….

April 8, 2014