Bocce and Social Security. The two are related. Sort of.
Tonight the new bocce season begins. August 14, 2014. Exciting!
On this same day August 14 in 1935, President Roosevelt signed into law the Social Security Act. Exciting, also! Without the law, there would be no Social Security and Medicare today.
A point of information. People are always saying Social Security is broke. Nothing could be farther from the truth. If the United States honored its obligations.
President Johnson needed money for the Vietnam War. He looked at all the money sitting idle in the Social Security Fund. He legally devised a method by which the government could take the unused funds for its own purposes. The government keeps taking and never pays back.
The United States owes the Social Security Fund $2.7 trillion. Social Security is the government’s biggest creditor. Number 2 China is owed less than $1 trillion.
When people yell Social Security is broke, they either intentionally forget or do not know what I have set forth. Even today the government continues to borrow money from the Social Security Fund. Your money and mine.
My yesterday began with a manicure at Lee Nails. Love Tammy!
I spent the afternoon researching further next week’s KONK Life column. Glory and Disgrace. About Great Britain in the early days of World War II. I plan on writing the column this afternoon.
Don’s Place was my first stop last night. Don is back. I was glad to see him.
I chatted a while with Stan and Clare and Hershel and Erika. Bocce, of course. Said hello to Grant.
Then to the Chart Room. Buffalo’s Tom Dixon is back in town! A rabid Syracuse fan. A Buffalo Bills fan, also. I asked Tom how the football team was going to be this year. He said terrific. I could not understand. Syracuse football has not distinguished itself in years. Turned out he was talking about the Buffalo Bills.
Tom’s wife Fran joined us. A charming lady.
We were together quite a while. We agreed to dine monday night at the Hot Tin Roof.
I had dinner at the outside bar at La Te Da. Always an interesting venue.
The people of the Keys and the turtles who live in its waters are lucky to have the Marathon Turtle Hospital.
Pine Tyme is an 80 pound loggerhead. In June, some fisherman found him in the ocean off Big Pine unable to dive. They got him on their boat and brought the turtle to the Turtle Hospital. Where he was named Pine Tyme.
Pine Tyme’s problem was gas in his intestines. He was not expelling it. He was full of air. No wonder he could not dive.
Pine Tyme has been treated and cured with antibiotics. He will be returned to the ocean friday.
I have been discussing on my various shows and in writing the past two years what I describe as the militarization of our police. Police departments across the country are receiving left over war machinery from the government. Police have also become cocky since 9/11. An item I discussed on my blog talk radio show this past tuesday.
Validity for my remarks is what is happening in Ferguson, Missouri at the moment. People are demonstrating. Some looting. The police have prohibited protesting in groups. Last night, the police were out in military gear. Armored vehicles. Repeating guns on top of them. The police used smoke bombs and tear gas to stop the demonstrators. At this point the demonstrators were merely walking down the street in group fashion.
You cannot defecate on a people. The demonstrators retaliated with molotov cocktails.
See the pictures and videos on television and the internet. Decide for yourself whether the police went too far, whether the police incited the retaliatory violence by the crowd.
Enjoy your day!