BARRETT RAINEY   Second Thoughts

Lots of folks have told me through the years “the only things certain in life are death and taxes.” As an official senior now, I know they forgot about Social Security and Medicare.

Several years ago, I reached the age when those two “certain” government programs became part of life. We had no choice. Happened rather seamlessly and both have provided the support they were governmentally supposed to. Adding a Medigap insurance policy – for those always necessary senior health needs excluded from Medicare – has about covered our situation. We’d really hate to be without ‘em.

I realize the wisdom necessary to authoritatively discuss Medicare and Social Security is supposed to come from our “experts” at the top – in Congress. Only “they” have the depth of understanding to conduct a thoughtful discussion of how these major programs should be redesigned and/or nearly eliminated. So any suggestions that might come from the ground up our here in the woods are likely not welcome. Ignoring that “wisdom” here are a couple of ideas from a satisfied senior experienced in both programs.

Without being armed – read “burdened” – by thousands of pages of statistics and ancillary reports from all sorts of government agencies, insurance companies, AARP and other outside sources – and the baggage of either political party – it seems to me there are really just two major things that need to be done to put both programs on a better financial footing. And both can be accomplished in one meeting lasting less than 30 minutes.

First, stop using a mortality table developed in 1964 to determine Social Security eligibility. We’re 49 years down the road from then and two major societal changes have taken place. We live longer and we work longer.

Today’s national insurance mortality numbers have Americans living closer to age 80 than 60-70 as was the case in 1964. No insurance company showing a profit today is using 49 year old data. Only our government.

It should be politically acceptable – meaning a no-brainer – to increase the beginning eligibility age to 70 over a period of 10 years or so starting in 2014. One year up in age each two calendar years or some such. Just cold, hard fiscal reasoning equitable for Republicans and Democrats alike. Us Independents, too.

The other change that must be made is to “means test” Social Security eligibility i.e. the more you make in later years, the less the monthly government payment. For example, make full eligibility for those with a joint retirement income of $150,000 a year or less. Maybe $80,000 single income. Then use a sliding scale of eligibility for reductions in increments of $50,000 joint income up to a point when there’s a cutoff. Maybe $500,000 or so.

The idea that Warren Buffett or Bill Clinton or Jay Leno and their multi-millionaire peers draw the same Social Security amount I do is ludicrous. Under a “means tested” plan, they might not get a cent. So? Where’s the hardship?

Swift adoption of both these ideas is doable. Get rid of all the useless discussions and bickering of what services to cut or who’s not eligible for what. Bickering – pardon me – discussions and amendments can always be made incrementally over the life of both programs. The immediate need is to assure solvency in both. Just adopting these two approaches could provide some stability before we hit the wall.

Those two changes are absolutely necessary. And one moer. Stop Congress from using Social Security trust funds as a private piggy bank to pay the bills members run up! STOP! Both parties! The bandits in Washington have been taking out dollars and writing IOU’s for years. I’ve often wondered why there haven’t been some class actions or other legal challenges for using lawfully dedicated funds for other purposes. Any other purposes. This prostitution of Social Security funding has been an open secret for years. Why hasn’t it been challenged? Damned if I know.

While these suggestions may contain too much common sense and come from the unwashed, non-elected, my guess is both will eventually be on the discussion table in some form. There’s too much at stake for too many of us not to solve the Social Security and Medicare issues.

I’m not convinced the current Congress will do anything. And it’s beginning to look like the makeup of the next Congress won’t be a whole lot different. Voters over the age of about 45 need to look at who we send there. These two issues need answers. It’s up to us to send folks who’ll find ‘em.

So far, we haven’t. And they haven’t.

BARRETT RAINEY   Second Thoughts

When you live in the forest surrounding a small, rural town in a somewhat isolated area – in a semi-retired status – you don’t feel the push and rush of everyday urban living. Absent the daily interruptions most people take for granted – and often ignore – you ponder a lot. About all kinds of things.

Here’s one. Reading new instructions from the hierarchy of the Catholic Church to advocate – from the pulpit – for immigration reform, I flash back on previous religious tampering with issues political. Things like abortion and gay rights and voting for specific church-chosen candidates. I found it wrong then and, while agreeing we urgently need a well-thought-out overhaul of our immigration laws and policies, I take strong issue with the mixing of religion and politics even on a subject I support.

True separation of church and state is an ethereal matter that sounds good but will never be realized. Just as issues of politics sometimes influence our choice of a religious affiliation, our church affiliations often slop over into our political thinking. We’re not a compartmentalized society in either area. But to allow religion to influence national policy – or national policy to affect our religious choices – is unacceptable. And wrong.

Because Hispanics are our largest immigration segment at the moment – and because many Hispanics are Catholics – such instructions from Catholic leadership are not unexpected. But would immigration policy advocated by – and acceptable to Catholics – serve Jews, Asians, Europeans, Africans, Muslims and other groups as well? Maybe. Maybe not. Each group is distinct. Each is motivated to seek citizenship for different reasons – often for distinctly different religious reasons. Whatever policy is ultimately created, it’ll have to be impartially authored and evenhandedly enforced.

Then there’s what to do with Edward Snowden and Bradley Manning. How do we deal with their kind? Despite unfounded political charges that both men have committed treason, it appears – at least legally – they have not. Treason is usually defined as attempting to overthrow a government or administration. Neither man did. What can be proven is each violated an oath of secrecy they swore to when accepting clearances to handle classified information. Makes no difference why. They did.

The point I ponder in this matter is, how does a government that must conduct some of its affairs in secret, guarantee its ability to do so? Literally millions of Americans have security clearances at some level, handling information classified from confidential to top secret. Some – for matters of conscience or money or fame – will violate the oaths they swore to when given classified access. You can bet the farm on that.

A sub-issue here is the proliferation of civilian – rather than military or government – employees handling the nation’s top secrets. That’s troubling. In the military, I had a top secret clearance . If I violated that responsibility – willfully or accidentally – it was dead certain the rest if my life would have been lived behind bars. Such direct – not to mention swift – reaction to some contractor’s nephew spilling the beans at a local bar likely can’t be guaranteed under the new civilian arrangements. It just can’t. The numbers are too large. There are other young, troubled Snowdens and Mannings out there. Whether for supposed conscious-clearing, patriotic or monetary reasons, we’ll see this violation of our national security again. And again. What do we do about it?

A third “ponder-ment” here in the deep woods: neither of the above concerns are on the radar of a lot of folks. A lot! And not just these two matters. From time to time, as I converse with people, I drop in a subject of current national discussion. Most of the time – far too much of the time – the other person either has no knowledge of it or says something like “Politics turn me off so I just ignore the whole thing.” It’s just that kind of willful ignorance that gave us the Bachman’s, Walsh’s, Gohmert’s, Broun’s, Rohrabacher’s, et al. And look what they’ve given us.

Lest you think I’m overstating, ask some of your friends questions like these: how many justices on the U.S. Supreme Court – how many rights in the Bill of Rights – what’s the current U.S. population to the nearest 10 million – the population of your state – who’s third in line to the presidency – how many members in Congress – which political party controls the House and/or Senate. Things any ninth grader should know. The answers will be both humorous and wrong in way too many instances.

What ties all these things together is a fast-changing society and far too many of us not keeping up. There are many more topics than these not being understood. How about our technology that can keep people alive long after they have no productive life but we haven’t dealt with the ethics of what to do when faced with life-ending decisions? We can create life in a petri dish but should we? Using a 3-D printer, we can “print” weapons that can kill us so how do we control that? If people can “print” objects on demand – including body replacement parts – how do we deal with copyrights and patents? We can “print” new body parts but should we? If we’re a nation under constant surveillance, who’s doing it and what’re the rules? And whose rules – if any – are they?

The speed at which these and other issues hit our society these days is mind-blowing. Just look at the last 15 years and gay rights and gay marriage. Has any other fundamental social change ever been dispatched so quickly? In the long history of social issues affecting an entire nation – if not the entire world – this one was settled almost “instantly” when compared to race and other challenges. And there are many, many more such life-changing and society-changing examples out there.

These are things for pondering by old men living in the forest. But they’re also part of the fabric of this nation we love. In your view, what shape is our fabric in these days? Ponder on that.

BARRETT RAINEY   Second Thoughts

There’s lots of craziness going on these days in states where the Republican Party is the dominant – really dominant – political game. No place worse than North Carolina where the governor and legislature are trampling civil rights, voting rights, personal rights, privacy rights, medical rights and about every other right you can think of to play to a diminishing crowd of white, nut-ball conservative, angry voters. Much of what the North Carolina legislature has done this year will wind up in the nation’s various courts. And a lot of it will likely be undone.

But Idaho and Utah are trying not to be forgotten in all the GOP excess with yet another run at a crazy idea wing-nut Republicans in those states have nourished for many a year – a takeover of federal land. They’re promoting it again with a new cast of characters hellbent on throwing the feds off the property. Every thinking resident of those states – of ANY party – should actively work to see this completely irresponsible idea fails yet again.

There are many, many reasons to keep such irresponsible efforts from being successful. But just concentrate on one – today’s terrible wildfires. Most western states have been badly burned this year. California, Oregon, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Arizona, Washington and Idaho. Much destruction has been on federal lands – grazing, ranching, recreational and timber.

Let’s just concentrate on one state – Idaho. Suppose Idaho owned all the federal land within its borders. All of it. Whatever was done with those lands – whatever happened on those lands – it would be up to Idaho taxpayers to take care of it and pay all the bills.

Now, focus on just one of the issues all Idahoans would have to contend with – wildfire. If the State owned all of the property on which our August fires have raged, every dollar – every dime – every penny to fight those fires would come out of the state treasury. Millions – tens of millions – would be the responsibility of the good folks of Idaho. The feds could sit on their considerable resources and roast marshmallows on the glowing coals.

“Go for it, Idaho,” they’d say. “You wanted to own it. You got it. And keep your damned flames away from our federal trees!”

So, Idaho taxpayers would be faced with a double-edged sword. One sharp edge would be the money lost in millions and millions of federal dollars now paid to Idaho coffers in lieu of taxes and from resource sales. The other edge would be the nearly impossible-to-cover costs of fighting massive blazes, then repairing all the damage.

And this. About half of all dollars spent on Idaho K-12 education comes from federal lands; whether it be timber bucks, in-lieu monies, recreation or tourist dollars. Now, if Idaho owned the land and increased timber cutting, you could make up that amount and probably more. And you might do that for a number of years. Then what? While you’re waiting many, many years for replacement trees to grow, where does the lost K-12 money come from? Rather, whom would it come from?

Year ago, Idaho had a U.S. Senator known for colorful – if not intellectual – quotes. One of them was: “It makes no sense to sell the farm to buy a sports car.” Not deep thinking. But accurate.

Even ignoring the economics and overall saneness of the fire argument, there are the hundreds of millions of dollars the feds pour into Idaho for maintenance of all that land. Throw ‘em out of Idaho and Utah – along with all federal dollars – and you’ll have either huge state tax increases or forests, lakes, rivers and range lands in worse shape than they already are.

Legislatures in both states currently have committees meeting with “experts” of this, that and the other. Some “experts” claim it’s not only possible to kick the feds out but the world – inside Utah and Idaho – would be a better place. Other “experts” say you can’t and shouldn’t.

At the moment, most of the supporters of this “out damned feds” effort are Republicans who believe timber companies and other privately owned resource extractors would be better caretakers of all those lands. While it’s possible there could be some improvements, private companies operate on the sound business principle of cost-versus-benefit. While that’s an old, well- proven and quite workable rule for business, it can seldom be applied to tasks the government undertakes for which profit is not possible.

You can argue there should be income to the states from federally owned lands within their borders. But operating and maintaining those lands is not a profit-making situation.

Before these GOP legislators get all heated up to tell the feds to take a hike, there needs to be a sound economic reason to do so. And – so far – nobody has made one.