"A Few Light Vignettes"

Sydney M. Williams

Thought of the Day

“A Few Light Vignettes”

June 24, 2011

“Government at Work”

The country is facing massive unemployment and deficit problems, yet the Department of Health and Human Services is focused on stopping people from smoking. They have used their valuable time and scarce resources to choose nine color images of the horrible damage that smoking can cause. “This is a critical moment for the United States to move forward in this area,” pontificated Dr. Margaret A. Hamburg, FDA Commissioner, somehow keeping a straight face. The images “will help encourage smokers to quit,” expounded the highly educated Secretary of HHS, Kathleen Sebelius. The New York Times interviewed a few people on the street: One, Khariton Popilevsky, speaking for a number of smokers, said: “Telling me things we already know. I’ll still be smoking.”

Perhaps they should have saved all this time and money and listened to a young, commonsensical Arab immigrant Saiful Islam who works for a convenience store: “Higher prices would cut sales a lot more than images on a pack.” …And increase government revenues. But, then what would Ms. Sebelius do for a living?

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“Let Them Eat Cake”

According to Dow Jones, Washington lawmakers are considering changes in how the CPI is calculated…again. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) calculations used to determine the CPI have been changed at least six times since World War II, most recently in 1995. In each case, the changes resulted in – surprise! – lowering reported rates of inflation. Such actions resulted in lower Social Security payments, raising GDP estimates and making the claim that real wages have fallen over time unfounded. In 1995 Congress appointed a commission – the Boskin Commission (led by Professor Michael Boskin of Stanford) – to study CPI’s ability to estimate inflation. (I always thought CPI was supposed to reflect inflation?)Their findings resulted in changes that reduced annual inflation by between 0.8%-1.6%. The current proposal would adjust for changes in people’s assumed behavior. For example, if beef prices rise, consumers are more likely to eat chicken; when gasoline prices fall, people drive more.

Since the proposed changes would lower reported inflation numbers again, that would impact income tax brackets, and reduce federal programs that are tied to the CPI, like Social Security, saving the government about $22 billion a year according to estimates, demonstrating once more that in Washington it is perception not reality that matters. Reducing spending and raising taxes, while doing neither, is manna from Heaven for politicians from both parties. But the American people are being treated like French citizens in 1792. Term limits!!

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“There are those who work for a living and those who vote for a living”

Food stamps have been renamed the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP.) That crisp acronym has attracted a lot more recipients who are receiving more money. A large increase in recipients is typical of recessions. However, eligibility for SNAP was expanded in March of 2009. Caps on assets were removed and minimum income was raised from 130% of the poverty level to 200%, and the 200% level was calculated after all deductions, no matter how many or for what. This has prompted a number of articles, some apocryphal I am sure, on how food stamps are being used to buy lobster, steak and champagne. But it has resulted in a 70% increase in recipients to 44 million (1 in 7 Americans) and a 133% increase in payments. (For comparison’s sake, in terms of recipients, in the 1970s only 1 in 50 received food stamps.) At this point thirty-five states have adopted the expanded program.

The issue of expanding recipients cannot be attributed to Mr. Obama and the Democrats alone. According to James Bovard, writing in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, food stamp recipients under George Bush by 2007 rose by 50%, and that was prior to the recession. Nevertheless, an increase in recipients adds to those who sup on the teat of government. It tilts the political playing field in favor of big government, as H.L. Mencken so succinctly noted about Americans eighty years ago, in the quote above.

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“The Mile-High Club at Southwest”

Perhaps this story should be entitled “One Who Aspired to the Mile-High Club!” An unnamed pilot (discretion apparently is important in the airline industry) using an air-traffic control frequency (perhaps he was trolling?) complained about the “slim dating pickings” among the Chicago based flight attendants. He was overheard as saying that of a dozen attendants, eleven were “over-the-top *&%@* homosexuals and one a granny.” (My wife, a grandmother of ten, would take exception with the insultingly gratuitous term “granny”!) The airline reported that the pilot – still unnamed – was suspended and sent to “sensitivity training.” Sensitivity training being a short course in the airline industry, he is now back in the pilot’s seat. However, it appears that the man must be excessively sensitive, at least to his own desires. He would have been better served by being sent to technical school, a place that would have taught him the purpose of each toggle switch in the cockpit. On the other hand, if he had been my father’s son he would simply have been spanked.

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I will be away until July 7, accumulating ideas that can be incorporated into future Thoughts of the Day, but more importantly spending precious time with my wife, children and grandchildren. Enjoy the fourth!