The Rich Wasp

I have been reading about Roman Polanski and his recent (and long overdue) arrest. Let us be clear. We are discussing a real rape of a child here. The victim did not change her mind after the fact. He is not charged simply because the 13 year old girl couldn’t legally consent. The crime is quite clearly that the victim did not consent.

In the summer of 1983, when I was 18 years old, I went on a double date with a 15 year old girl. On this date, nothing happened. If instead we had sex and the 15 year old girl was willing, that would have been a felony in the state of Indiana, because the law presumes the girl was incapable of consent.

Roman Polanski was 25 years older than I was, and the girl was two years younger than the girl I went on the double date with. Polanski gave her alcohol and drugs to make her more compliant. This makes Polanski a dirty old man and a child rapist.

Just because Polanski is an artist, and has suffered in his life does not excuse his behavior. He is still a dirty old man, and should go to prison. He may well die in prison. If he doesn’t like that, he shouldn’t have committed the crime and fled the country when it became obvious the judge wasn’t going to accept his plea deal.

Hoosierboy has written a post about Jimmy Carter calling Obama’s critics racist.   His post inspired me to write a comment which I have decided to repost here.

Thanks for linking to those wise words of former President Carter. I did not realize until now that I too am a bigot.

When my parents divorced decades ago, my dad rented an apartment in The Meadows and I remember playing with a kid who lived in a nearby apartment. Shortly after that, my mom had to go out of town for some job training, so I found myself integrating an inner city daycare for a few weeks.

Until now, I thought that playing with children who happened to have a different skin color without giving it any more thought than one would give playing with children with different color hair made me the fulfillment of MLK’s dream.

However I now realize that I’m a bigot because I don’t agree with every word and deed of President Obama.

For those who don’t know Indianapolis history, The Meadows was an apartment complex near 38th and Rural. At one point in the 60′s it was the hip, trendy place to live. After that, it turned mostly black. At some point after that, crime became a real problem. Several Indianapolis Mayors targeted the area for revitalization efforts which all failed. I think it was ultimately torn down.

The Democrats always seem to envision an economic stimulus package as trying to stimulate consumer spending.  It seems to me that encouraging business reinvestment is at least an equally valid way to stimulate the economy.

If I spend $1000 on a new home computer, that stimulates the economy by $1000.  There is no benefit to the US economy if I can play my favorite computer game 10% faster.  I’m still going to spend the same number of hours playing on the computer.

However if my employer spends $1000 to buy a new computer for me to use at work, then the economy is also stimulated by $1000.  Although the effect does not end there.  If I am 10% more productive on the average workday, this benefits my employer significantly.   This benefit might enable them to drop prices to generate more business or enable them to be (more) profitable in these lean economic times.   Or perhaps my employer could give me a pay raise!  If this productivity increase causes my employer to be more profitable, then they will be paying more corporate income tax.   If the productivity increase leads to my getting a pay raise, then I pay more income tax.   I’d think the Democrats of all people would be in favor of either increase in tax revenues.

Please check out The Angry Economist who makes his way immediately to the blogroll for this post which contains the following sentence:

Michael Moore has gotten rich off of telling other people that they shouldn’t be rich like him.

I wish I had written that. Thanks to Eric S. Raymond for the link.

It’s hard to believe that it has already been eight years since the horrific terrorist attack on our country that destroyed the World Trade Center and damaged the Pentagon. And since the heroes of Flight 93 chose to cause their plane to crash into a Pennsylvania field rather than the target that the terrorists intended.

I have not forgotten. I have no eloquent words to say, but I remember those nearly 3000 Americans who died eight years ago. And I will remember their loss and sacrifice as long as I live.

Given that the trust fund for Medicare Part A (Hospital Insurance) is projected to go broke in 2017, shouldn’t we use any savings from eliminating waste and fraud in Medicare to fix Medicare instead of creating some new giant government bureaucracy?  Wouldn’t that be the fiscally responsible thing to do?

By the way, the source for the estimate that the trust fund being depleted by 2017 is from A Summary of the 2009 Annual Reports by The Social Security and Medicare Trustees.  The Trustees include Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner,  Labor Secretary Hilda Solis and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. All three of these Trustees are Obama Administration appointees. This begs the question, does the President disagree with his appointees conclusion, or his he only talking about fiscal responsibility?

In fact, the Trustees call fixing this problem an urgent concern.

The projected exhaustion of the HI Trust Fund within the next eight years is an urgent concern. Congressional action will be necessary to ensure uninterrupted provision of HI services to beneficiaries. Correcting the financial imbalance for the HI Trust Fund—even in the short range alone—will require substantial changes to program income and/or expenditures.

It certainly sounds to me like President Obama’s appointees think that this is a serious problem. So why does the President propose eliminating waste in fraud in a program that will be broke in eight years to fund a giant new entitlement? The only two answers I can conclude are he doesn’t believe the Trustees whom he appointed or he doesn’t believe in fiscal responsibility.

I have been too busy with real life to blog.  This will change in the near future, as I need a place to vent about politics and current events.  As I want to know what my readers think, I have turned off comment moderation, and enabled the Akismet anti-spam plugin.

I am doing this because I believe that what has made the United States the greatest country in the world is not a government program, but the free and open exchange of ideas.  The solution for offensive speech is not censorship, but speech criticizing the offensive speech.