The Catskill Chronicle

By Mort Malkin

The Issues are calling: “Write about me.” “No, me first.” “I am more urgent.”  OK, you many Matters who need attention. I’ve called together the Gadfly Revelry and Research team and said, “More research and less revelry — we have problems to solve.” So, they selected four and offered to put their collective creativity to work in exchange for the promise of a celebration after each.

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First, they took on American Exceptionalism in its tradition of gun violence. The recent spree of mass murders in high schools, theaters, colleges, shopping malls, and grade schools (Colorado, Virginia, Arizona, and Connecticut) are called “mass shootings by deranged individuals.” But, aren’t these mass killings as much “terrorist acts” as the use of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) by Islamic insurgents in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan?

We’ve heard all the debate between the NRA and common sense. We need guns for hunting, shooting sports, and personal protection; and the Second Amendment says we can have them as long as we are in a well regulated militia. The next question is, what kind of a hunter needs more than one or two bullets to kill a deer? Hunters who must have 30 clip magazines on high-powered semi-automatic rifles to bring down a buck, let alone a doe, ought to have their licenses revoked. As to self protection, Matt Dillon and Wyatt Earp found 6-shooters quite adequate.

The NRA says every school teacher should pack a pistol (with a 30-round magazine?). Other Second Amendment rightists say guns should be allowed in movie houses [in case the hero in the film needs help?] and in bars [to settle philosophical disagreements?]. Gadfly suggests that it would be just as Constitutional to allow guns in the US House and Senate, and the White House, as well. As to the Supreme Court, we should ask Justice Scalia, a strong gun advocate, his opinion about the Second Amendment rights in the gallery of the Court.

The Gadfly R & R team then tackled the question of semi-automatic military assault rifles. If the Second Amendment says the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, does that right extend to ground-to-air missiles and cruise missiles and depleted uranium-tipped anti-tank shells? Perhaps the Second Amendment right should only pertain to flintlock muskets, the guns our Founding Fathers knew.

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The next major Matter investigated by the Gadfly team was what the Congress, and occasionally the President, call “entitlements.” The politicians who see the amount of money sent out each month to seniors by way of Social Security checks as a window to the $2.7 trillion Social Security Trust Fund. Here’s the arithmetic. Working people have payroll taxes deducted from every paycheck — money that is deposited into the Social Security and Medicare Trust Funds. The Trust Funds then invest that money in the safest investment in the world, US Treasury bonds. These are the same Treasury bonds as purchased by China, Japan, Saudi Arabia … for all their balance-of-payments earnings.

If the US defaults on the Treasuries held by the Social Security Trust Fund, all the other holders of US Treasury bonds may get nervous about their own bonds. Will China stop accepting payment for the goods produced for Walmart and Nike and Apple, in dollars? Will China refuse to accept US Government bonds for dollars? The Chinese are enigmatic capitalists – they might insist on gold or South Sea pearls.

Let’s change the name of these obligations to senior citizens, which they already paid for, from “entitlements” to “IOUs.” Social Security payments to seniors are not handouts; they were earned and paid into the Trust Fund every week of the seniors’ working lives. Do we have to define “Trust”?

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Another Matter that matters is the attempt of the conspiracy of privateers to convince the public that the US Postal Service is losing money. Implicit in their capitalistic argument is the corollary that we should sell off the Post Office to FedEx or UPS. The Post Office delivers letters and occasional packages, door to door, and pays for itself. It doesn’t contribute to the deficit one bit. In fact, it has a $55 billion nest egg from the profits of previous years and its contributions to the retirement funds.

In 2006 Congress passed a law, the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act (PAEA), requiring the Postal Service to pre-fund 75 years of retirement and health care benefits within 10 years. This PAEA law also mandates the Postal Service to pay for the Postal Regulatory Commission and the Inspector General. An asset of the Post Office that lies quietly under the radar and on the books at its original value is the properties of individual Post Offices. Wouldn’t the commercial delivery services like to get their hands on the more valuable ones and sell them at current market value? All told, the Postal Service is in good financial shape.

Even so, the Gadfly team came up with a few ideas. Once creativity is on a roll, it won’t get turned off. Why not add additional services the Post Offices can offer the public:

• WiFi for Internet access
• Fax service
• Postal money orders
• Check cashing
• Copying/printing/binding service
• Notary public
• Postal savings accounts
• Latte cafes

The Postal Service would soon make so much money, they could reduce the price of a first class letter to 25¢ and bring back the penny postcard.

Benjamin Franklin, our first Postmaster General, will rest easy.

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The last Matter considered before Gadfly’s collective attention span expired was: money to run the government. Actually there is no shortage of cash – its just that it’s in private hands and beyond taxes. Off shore accounts world wide, most of them belonging to US corporations and very rich Americans, add up to at least $24 trillion. Since the time of Enron, off-shore accounts are no secret. Mitt Romney has 135 of them – the Cayman Islands, Luxembourg, Switzerland, and the Bahamas, at least.

Untaxed off-shore accounts, though, are small potatoes. The real money is in derivative trading, a market of obscene size — $1.14 quadrillion! It is totally unregulated and beyond the view and review of the SEC. Worse, it is driven mostly by computer trading of speculators. For a full explication, see the Gadfly essay “Derivatives—Where the Money Is.”

Dear readers, Gadfly will consider for future columns any Matters you deem worthy. Just send a note.