Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Paterno's Statute. What to do with it?


There should be a special place in the College Football Hall of Fame.

A place that would feature Joe Paterno in lead position.

Jo-Pa is the guy who recently held the title "Winningest Coach in College Football"

But that was before a review board held their collective noses and scratched away his last 189 wins because he had covered up pedophilia by one of his assistant coaches for 13 years.  Paterno didn't want word to get out.  Paterno didn't want to let anything happen that might tarnish his reputation.  So.  Paterno knew about the child sodomization that was being conducted by one of his assistant coaches, and when that assistant coach quit, Paterno helped him continue access to the Penn State locker room area and helped him create an organization to "help" young boys in athletic "skills".

Now Penn State has taken Paterno's statute down from a pedestal outside Beaver Stadium and removed it to a "secure location".   They have it "covered up", which seems fitting somehow, but they really don't know what to do with it.

My suggestion is to send it to the College Football Hall of Fame, mount it on another "pedestal", more appropriate to its new significance, and let Joe Paterno stand there forever as one of the very worst people ever to walk the face of the earth.  To Joe Paterno, fame was very important.  He has earned his fame through the hidden tears of young boys.  Tears that he covered up.  Let his statute bask in the fame it deserves.

Friday, July 13, 2012

Social Security


Social Security was really not designed for individuals but for America itself.  It is intended for ALL the people in our country.  Just as police and fire departments protect their city, Social Security provides another kind of protection for a greater community.  
Many of the recipients of Social security helped build the community they live in.  Now, as they grow older, the purchases they continue to make become transferred into wages that are paid to workers at grocery stores, drug stores and gasoline stations, and also generate orders for more merchandise from suppliers.  In this way the recipients of the benefit payments continue to support their community even as they provide for their own personal needs. 
It is sometimes said that social Security provides a safety net for people who did not adequately prepare for retirement.  That’s true.  It also provides a safety net for people who did provide for retirement but because of reasons now beyond their control find those pensions became insufficient.  Other people planned as well as they could for retirement but simply outlived their plan – they, or their spouse lived “too long”.  Social Security does not ask you how long you want to live.  
Social Security was never intended to constitute our only source of retirement funding. We do need to prepare for our own retirement and that is our own responsibility.  Some of us recall when President Bush said that Individual  Retirement Accounts “will be yours – and the government cannot take it a way from you!”  But it has always been the government that has come to the aid of our citizens after the corporations and markets have failed and turned against them.  Our government has not abandoned its citizens as many corporations have done, even in the very recent past.  It is not going to merge with other governments and it does not collapse when the markets fail.