Is it getting warm in here, or is it just me?...

I’m sure we’ve all heard the old theory that if you put a frog in a pan of hot water, it will immediately jump out, but if you place a frog in a pan of warm water, and turn up the heat slowly, the frog will stay in the pan, no matter how hot it gets.

I can’t testify for sure if that is true. I do remember one time in my younger days when my old buddy Stinky Wilmont and I decided to give the theory a test. One afternoon, over at Stinky’s house, we filled his mother’s stewing pot about half-way with warm water, and put it on the kitchen stove.

The plan was that Stinky would put his pet frog, Harold, in the pot, and I would start turning the knob slowly upward until either Harold or Stinky couldn’t stand it any more.

Unfortunately, as was the fate of many of our adventures, it didn’t turn out exactly as we had planned. As soon as Harold hit the water, he made a mad leap out of the pan, across the kitchen cabinets and behind the refrigerator. In our efforts to catch him, we knocked the pot of water over on the stove, and spent the next several minutes trying to outrun Mrs. Wilmont and that extra thick Redelman’s Hardware Store yardstick that she kept around for just such occasions.

Thus ended our scientific experiment. We never saw or heard from Harold again.

And we never figured out if the water was to hot right from the beginning, or if Harold just figured it was going to get to hot, and decided to make good his escape before that happened. We seldom spoke of Harold after that day.

Government has a way of turning up the heat slowly whenever it institutes a new program, and the American people seem to be pretty accepting of such things, as long as things increase slowly enough. When the income tax was first initiated in 1862, it took 3% of most Americans( in the north) income, except for the very poor or the very rich. It was eliminated 1872, shortly after the war was paid off.

When it was re-adopted in 1913, (most politicians consider permanently) it again started as a small percentage of income on a portion of the population. That percentage has slowly grown and fluctuated over the years, reaching as high as 94% on some incomes at the end of the Second World War, before settling at our current levels of nothing to 35%, depending on your income. Of course, a myriad of other taxes, such as sales and property tax, have also increased slowly and gradually so that must of us spend about half of what we make to support government services and programs.

Social Security worked out about the same way. It started out in 1936 claiming 1% from the employee and employer on the first $3000.00 of income. The plan was to slowly increase the maximum “donation” to 3% by each party. Had that remained true, even adjusting for inflation, the most you would pay today would be $700.00 per year. The government turned it up to $12,500. Slowly. Some of us even remember when the maximum Medicare deduction was $43.00 per year. The combined unfunded liability of both programs is now around $60 trillion.
There is a growing opposition to the health care plan that is being proposed in Washington right now. Maybe because a lot of people realize it is too expensive right now. Maybe because a lot of people realize it is going to be even more expensive in the future.

Thomas Jefferson warned that it is the natural tendency of government to grow. It’s also the natural tendency of government to turn up the heat.

I think even Harold knew that.

Stick 'em up...

I don't think there's much doubt that Bernie Madoff is a crook. He swindled a lot of people out of a lot of money by convincing them he was investing it wisely, when actually he was running a Ponzi scheme where he took money from investors and paid off earlier investors, all the time depending on the hope that he would never run out of new and willing investors, and hoping that no one ever really looked behind the curtain to closely.

In a more violent version of theft, George Chestnut took a gun into a bank and demanded money. One crook used fraud, and one crook used force, and rightfully the government stepped in to try and put a stop to it.

That's what government should do. Protect its citizens from force and fraud, and when it doesn't manage to do that, it should provide a mechanism for retribution by the victims of force and fraud. It sure shouldn't be in the business of initiating force or fraud. Unfortunately, that's not always the case.

For the last 70 years, our government has operated the largest Ponzi scheme ever. Social Security depends on current workers to fund retirees benefits. What started as a $60.00 per year required maximum contribution to the fund has increased to today's maximum of $12,468.00.

And several years ago, the Supreme Court ruled that you have no legal claim to the money you have invested in Social Security. The amount of benefits you receive will be decided by Congress (which by the way, decided not to participate), and can be delayed, reduced or redirected at their whim.

There's a lot of talk about increasing contributions again, and delaying, reducing, and redirecting payments from Social Security, especially with the fund dwindling as it pays out more than it takes in.

And in a few years, if a majority of voters look behind the curtain, and decide they can no longer afford to contribute to the mostly imaginary fund, like in all Ponzi schemes, the last in will be left holding the bag.

Of course, the prudent thing to do would be for taxpayers to withdraw from the current system and save for their retirement in various ways that allow them to actually own their savings.

Unfortunately, unless you're one of a very select few, trying to do so will put you on the receiving end as our government switches from fraud to force.

And you're probably not going to like it.

Do as I say, not as I do...

About 40 years ago, Arlo Guthrie blasted his draft board for questioning whether or not he was moral enough to kill people after having been accused of littering. I always thought he raised a valid point, although I still didn't think it excused his littering.

A couple of recent events remind me of Arlo's plight. Illinois Governor Blagojevich has been accused and all but convicted of planning to sell Barak Obama's Senate seat for an undetermined amount of money or favor. A despicable abuse of power, no doubt, and deserving of all of the wrath other officials are heaping on it. But I recall a couple of months ago when 58 members of the House of Representatives turned down an ill-advised bail-out of Wall Street, only to change their votes when offered $130 billion.

I wondered at the time if a Senator cost more than a Representative. Apparently we'll have to wait a little longer for an answer now.

We're also witnessing the prosecution by the government of Bernard Madoff, a con man who bilked investors out of billions of dollars in an elaborate Ponzi scheme, where Madoff used money from current investors to pay previous investors. The plan bears a striking resemblance to the government's Social Security plan, except that under Madoff's scheme, people were not forced to participate.

Still, fraud is fraud, and I hope Madoff is vigorously prosecuted. In fact, I'd be tickled if they went after everybody that commits this type of crime.

I realize that there are a few duties that we should grant to government instead of to individuals.

But there are also some actions that need to be prosecuted, regardless of who or what is guilty of instigating them.