Andrew Sullivan: Boomers Will "Hog" Soc. Security

Today on his blog conservative Andrew Sullivan is moaning about the future tax increases that his one time hero Junior Bush has made inevitable by running up huge deficits. Sullivan also claims that he'll only get about half of what he should under Social Security when he retires because "baby boomers" will "hog" it all for themselves. This is typical of the upside down logic of conservatives.

If the money squandered on the Iraq war was combined with the reversal of the unethical tax cuts for the wealthy instituted from the Reagan era onward, Sullivan would get his full Social Security payment, we'd be able to fully fund Medicare, provide healthcare insurance to all Americans, and fix our schools. Conservatives simply have the wrong priorities.

Photo: We lost two sets of beach steps and a ramp to a Nor'easter in April. As of Memorial Day the Brookhaven Town Highway Department had only replaced one stairway leaving an unsafe situation for holiday crowds. Apparently, work resumed yesterday on the other stairway. Our Property Owner's Association was basically gutted a few years ago and replaced by a feel-good but ineffective Community Association. In addition, a private group funded replacement stairways in past years, so the town got used to being able to ignore Cherry Grove's needs. This is going to be a difficult situation to rectify.

Jim

End State Killing

It's amazing what will grow out here on this arid, windy sand bar. Here's a delicate little wild flower that grows in the sand. It's a single stalk that stands a few inches high. The blossoms are only about 3/8 of an inch across. But it is a welcome bit of color and beauty along the walkway through the center of the island.

Now for something not so pretty, the death penalty. According to Yahoo AP news, an Ohio inmate took a long time to die during a recent execution:

The 16 minutes it took Christopher Newton to die once chemicals began
flowing into his veins was the longest stretch that any of the state's inmates
executed since 1999 has endured, an Associated Press review shows.
During
that span Thursday — more than twice as long as usual, and 5 minutes longer than
the state's previous longest on record — Newton's stomach heaved, his chin
quivered and twitched, and his 6-foot, 265-pound body twice mildly convulsed
within the restraints.

Now, some people may say that this is fine, that the criminal got what he deserved, etc. But I think that the fact that we as a country continue to officially murder people shows how barbaric our society actually is. Click on the title of this post above and read about the problems with the death penalty. I have always felt that it lowers us to the least common denominator among civilized societies in the world. I think we are about the last Western nation to employ capital punishment. We ought to stop the official killing at home and abroad.

Update on the post yesterday about the town of Brookhaven replacing the beach access stairways in Cherry Grove: they replaced ONE of the three stairways, and they did not return on Friday to replace the others, so we have two truncated ramps that represent a dangerous situation to residents and visitors as the holiday weekend is upon us!

Jim