NOTHING FOR SOMETHING
by David Sisler
I subscribe to a spam-blocker for my email. I do not have time for the hundreds of pieces of spam which reach my account every day, offering – well, you get the same junk.
The service allows me the opportunity to preview any email before the sender is approved. I made a purchase a few days ago from an online retailer I had not used before, and so I was checking the blocked mail without waiting for the seller to respond to the automatic notice.
The piece of mail I wanted was there, along with two whose subjects were intriguing, so I used the preview.
The first one was entitled, “Dear Fellow Servant of the Lord.”
I was surprised to hear from James Mayo (he said I would be), “the first son of Zuma Mayo one of the most popular black farmers in Zimbabwe who was recently murdered in the land dispute in my country.”
Mr. Mayo, it seems, has been forced to flee to the Netherlands, but he could not take his $9.5 million with him, and so out of the generosity of his heart, he has offered to give me 30 percent of it, if I will help him circumvent certain banking regulations. All I have to do is give him my bank account number and he will make the deposit, and surely pigs will fly.
The second email, entitled “Working in His Vineyard,” was from Mrs. Racheal Jones “a widow to the late Shiek [sic] who was killed alongside my only son in the Gulf war.” With her husband and son dead, and the lady “bedriden [sic] due to chronic cancer” she wants to give my ministry a large portion of her money because “Wealth acquisition I have come to agree is vanity upon vanity as the book of Ecclesiates [sic] say.”
Oh, those flying pigs.
But people fall for it. The gullible believe you can get something for nothing. The greedy never understanding that if it sounds too good to be true, it almost certainly is – especially if it is in an email from someone in the throes of grief, wanting to throw money at someone they do not know. When their bank accounts are cleared out, they just can’t understand what happened.
Well, the media in recent days has been full of such claims of something for nothing. And these are coming from John Kerry and his election camp.
There is a shortage of flu-vaccine, and John F. Kerry wants you to know it is President George W. Bush’s fault. Kerry has plan so that will never happen again.
This is typical, Kerry says, of the President’s mishandling of the health care system. In a series of “crash ads” which utilize breaking news items, Kerry says: “Seniors and children wait. Not enough vaccines for pregnant women. A George Bush mess.”
Kerry neglected to tell viewers that the Bush Administration has increased spending on flu preparedness from $39 million to $283 million.
There is a shortage of flu vaccine and the reason is two-fold.
First, a British agency halted shipments from a Liverpool-based vaccine maker because of bacterial contamination.
Second, the number of manufacturers who make flu vaccine is dwindling because greedy lawyers, like Vice Presidential Candidate John Edwards, are bankrupting them with unceasing tort claims.
Kerry’s ads did not tell the American public that last year he opposed legislation which would have immunized vaccine makers against punitive damages in lawsuits involving FDA-approved products. The bill would have limited non-economic damages to $250,000 in all liability cases, but it never came to the Senate floor for a vote (with Kerry’s non-voting record, it wouldn’t have mattered, anyway).
John Kerry tells us that world leaders, the world over, want him to be president. He claims he will build coalitions using his world-wide support.
Last week German Defense Minister Peter Struck said that his nation would consider sending troops to Iraq under the right circumstances, and praised Kerry’s idea of a world summit on Iraq.
Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder immediately contradicted Mr. Struck. There are no conditions under which German troops will ever be sent to Iraq, the German leader said.
So much for German support.
Mr. Kerry has tried to get Japan to agree to bilateral talks with North Korea which would leave Japan – remember Kim Jong Il said he would turn Japan into a nuclear lake – out of any talks about North Korea’s nuclear disarmament, and coincidentally, out of talks about Japan’s safety from North Korean aggression.
Japan’s Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said, “I’m close to Bush, so I’d like him to do well.” That’s about as close to an endorsement as you can get without outright saying so.
So, two more of Kerry’s “supporters” have withdrawn their support.
Finally, for this piece, John Kerry has pulled out the old tried-and-true “Scare Seniors Citizens With Lies About Social Security” ploy.
Kerry says that President Bush will pull a “January surprise” to “privatize” Social Security. At the same time, Kerry said that the Bush administration “has plans to cut Social Security benefits by 30 to 40 percent.”
The Kerry scare-tactic wants retirees to believe that privatization will take all of the money out of the Social Security fund. The truth is, that at age 57, looking down the road to drawing Social Security, there is no account with my name on it, and if there was, it wouldn’t have any money in it. All we are paying in Social Security taxes today are being spent by politicians today. If my children and grandchildren don’t keep paying, there won’t be anything for me. And there sure won’t be anything for them – without reform.
I suppose John Kerry was asleep during the Republican National Convention when President Bush said, “We will always keep the promise of Social Security for our older workers,” and talked about strengthening the national retirement plan by allowing investors to have a personal account that is not subject to government pilferage.
Privatization allows tax-payers the option of putting some of their mandated deductions into accounts that the politicians can’t raid. John Kerry won’t tell you that.
The Wall Street Journal writes today, “If the U.S. leaves its retirement system unchanged, the deficit will increase and benefits will have to be reduced. The amount paid out to retirees will begin to exceed that paid in by workers in 2018, at which point the deficit will begin to rise to unprecedented levels. And when the Social Security Administration runs out of Treasury bonds around 2042, the law mandates that benefits be cut, probably by 27% initially and then more in the following years.”
John Kerry says he will not raise Social Security taxes. John Kerry says he will not raise the retirement age. John Kerry says he will not cut benefits for people who are on Social Security. John Kerry says he will not privatize Social Security.
I will believe that James Mayo and Racheal Jones will give me millions of dollars out of the goodness of their hearts, before I ever believe John Kerry’s something for nothing claims. Nothing for something is more like it.
-30-
Copyright 2004 by David Sisler. All Rights Reserved.
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