The Joys of Retirement?

I had figured that retirement would entail putting my feet up comfortably and relaxing. Little did I guess that rather I or my patient wife would be sitting at the computer or on phone for lengthy sessions straightening out the errors of our various voracious systems.

Could one guess that the Chase fraud credit card protection unit would begin to cancel legitimate charges for things like medications -- and then would insist that they would never do such things. Two days later finally fixed.

Or would one assume that Medicare would take many months to operate or fail to connect the back up insurance with certainty for more than a year. Hate to report the numerous communications on that one -- no wonder that American medicine costs so much. The insurance companies were worse. My wife's battles before I retired pried loose many more thousands at first denied that were owing.

It is pretty obvious that many are terrified that they will lose their jobs and one begins to wonder if they are rewarded for cheating the customers?
--
"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy cited by Machiavelli)
--
Ed Kent 212-665-8535 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CollegeConversation
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http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PrivacyRights
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Israel_Palestine
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http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
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Trashing Our Kids

OP-ED COLUMNIST
Even Worse for Young Workers
By BOB HERBERT
Young people who remain unemployed for substantial periods of time will not only find it difficult to make up that ground, but could be lastingly scarred.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/28/opinion/28herbert.html?th&emc=th

..................

One of my neighbors several weeks back published an excellent letter in the NY Times pointing out that testing of young children tends to destroy their love of learning which needs to be encouraged at the earliest age to make education more than a punitive block to gaining knowledge. Sadly she was addressing only a portion of American kids because most do not (as do those in other developed nations) even get the benefit of early education. Such is only available to many at exorbitant tuition costs. Thus, most are permanently left at a disadvantage in our competitive culture.

Bob Herbert's column further notes the exclusion from jobs of even those who have made it through college, let alone done high school. And it is no secret that without jobs kids are likely headed towards crime and jail which will pretty well wipe out their futures -- all those homeless vets.

Bottom line is that we Americans are trashing our kids. We have the world's highest incarceration rate (1/4 of the total with a population of only 1/20).

No fault of the Chinese, then, to scorn our lack of respect for human rights at home. Shame on us.

Ed Kent
--
"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy cited by Machiavelli)
--
Ed Kent 212-665-8535 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CollegeConversation
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PeaceEfforts
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EndingPoverty
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/440neighborhood
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/StudentConcerns
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AcademicFreedom
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PrivacyRights
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Israel_Palestine
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FindingHumaneJobs
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/OurStupidEconomy
http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
http://www.bloggernews.net

Whee! I Can See!

For the past several months I have been off line due to the decline in vision of my one good eye. The cataract surgery a few days ago has been a success. I had delayed because botched work in my other eye 10 years ago had destroyed normal vision.

A thought for the period -- the massive Ponzi schemes from which we are now suffering are the work of our investment bankers and Wall St. brokers. I am only a legal philosopher by profession, but I had predicted our crash in the spring of '07. My father had been an honest broker and had muttered his outrage to me at the schemes of his day which are pretty much the same as those of the present. The game is to sell worthless stuff at high prices to the suckers who get stuck when the markets wake up and no suckers are left to inflate prices of things worth sometimes 0 or routinely as little as 1/40 sale prices.

Don't panic. Suckers never learn.

Ed Kent

P.S. Apologies to list members for not getting spams corrected.
--
"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy cited by Machiavelli)
--
Ed Kent 212-665-8535 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CollegeConversation
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PeaceEfforts
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EndingPoverty
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/440neighborhood
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/StudentConcerns
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AcademicFreedom
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PrivacyRights
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Israel_Palestine
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FindingHumaneJobs
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/OurStupidEconomy
http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
http://www.bloggernews.net