It's Good To Be The King...Or Maybe A Congressman: Part 2

Continued Part 1 (http://beyond-the-political-spectrum.blogspot.com/2009/11/its-good-to-be-kingor-maybe-congressman.html)Whenever I think of the level and extent of the various non-compensatory benefits that our Congressional representatives receive—especially in relation to the week-to-week struggles that the rest of us must endure in these lean economic times—I am reminded of a now-famous line from Mel Brooks’ 1981 “History of The World, Part 1.” In one segment of the comedy classic, Brooks portrays King Louis XVI, lampooning the French Monarch’s...

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It's Good To Be The King...Or Maybe A Congressman: Part 1

It’s Black Friday, the shopping debacle that marks the day immediately after Thanksgiving. And unless you’re one of the federal lawmakers we vote into Congress to represent us every 2-to-4 years, you’re probably one among the besieged masses of this current economic climate struggling to not only find the money to even buy your loved ones a present, but to—at the same time—maintain the necessities of a marginally decent livelihood. But if you are a member of Congress, these are great times. Despite being the authorities who determine how much...

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Death & Taxes...OK, Just Death Then.

So I’m watching CBS’s 60 Minutes last night, and right off the bat, the very first story catches my attention; “The Cost of Dying.” The piece was about how the average American is willing to incur tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical fees and costs in the hope that medical science can (vainly) stem the one immutable universal fact of existence—eventual death—despite being irreparably ill in many of the cases. On last night’s broadcast, the producers focused on the cases of two older individuals who were suffering from different...

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