Life's Inanities and Ironies

GLEE GIVES $1 MILLION! Your vote can help deserving schools ... Check out this video and help this school win up to 50K for their school music program. Lend your voice by voting today. Wall Street’s excesses blew up the economy.  Now the question is who pays to clean up the mess. And across the country, our children are already paying part of the bill – as their schools are hit with deep budget cuts.  A new report –   StarvingAmerica’s Public Schools:  How Budget Cuts and Policy Mandates are Hurtingour Nation’s Students   – released Oct.12, 2011 by the Campaign for America’s Future and the National Education Association looks at five states to detail what this means to kids in our public elementary and secondary schools. Every study shows the importance of early childhood education.  Analysts at the Federal Reserve discovered that investments in childhood development have, in the words of Fed Chair Ben Bernanke, such “high publi...

Nonprofits are on the front lines of the recession, tending to our neighbors in need. A new survey released March 21st finds that American charities expect 2011 to be another tough year of increasing demand and dwindling resources. The Nonprofit Finance Fund 2011 Survey finds that 85 percent of nonprofits expect demand for their services to expand this year, but fewer than half have the resources to meet that growing need. This comes after three consecutive years of increased demand on these nonprofits, the survey finds. “Years of economic uncertainty have forced nonprofits to adjust to the ‘new normal’ of scarce resources and increased demand,” said Rebecca Thomas, vice president of consulting services at NFF. “Some of the adjustments we’re seeing are creative and healthy... Other effects [such as] layoffs, people who need services being turned away... are further compromising the social safety net at a great cost to America.” That's a dire warning at a time when elected officia...

It is being reported today that the GDP expanded 3.5% in the third quarter. That seems to be a good sign, but don’t start singing “Happy Days Are Here Again!”! I question how much of this expansion is due to the government getting out the taxpayer’s credit card and artificially and temporarily expanding the economy. By one estimate that I heard recently as much as 10% of our economy is derived from an ever expanding national debt. Last quarter was boosted by the $24,000 that was spent per car on the cash for clunkers program, the $8.000 being given to fist time homeowners (artificially inflating home values), and thousands of other programs financed by the $1.8 TRILLION ($1,800,000,000,000) that Washington added to the national debt this year. The White House has admitted that the stimulus’s greatest impact has already been achieved and the stimulus will have little impact next year. ( click here ) Unemployment figures are now becoming worthless because the rates do not reflect...

I received this in the last couple of days as an email and I have to say it is one of the best plays on an old story that I have read in awhile. The first time I read this was in one of Sir Richard Burton's,(No...NOT the actor...Come on people), translations of an Arabian Nights story. It used as its characters a king and merchant, but in that one the merchant was the "villain" so to speak. Once again it all boils down to perspective. I don't know the author of this version, but I see the dark and foreboding truth in this brilliant adaptation of the parable. "Once upon a time, I was invited to the White House for a private dinner with the President. I am a respected businessman, with a factory that produces memory chips for computers and portable electronics. There was some talk that my industry was being scrutinized by the administration, but I paid it no mind. I live in a free country. There's nothing that the government can do to me if I...