Walking to his car, he didn’t notice the sunshine.
30
Today President Metzger issued an executive order to all government departments responsible for entitlement payments, reducing each payment from 20 to 40 percent, as authorized by the Balanced Budget Amendment. But reduced entitlement payments were not the only income reversals for the elderly. Negative profits and heavy mutual fund losses have severely impacted pension plans and retirement incomes, in general.
Also today, the president once more requested authorization to override the balanced budget requirements.
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The recent epidemic of executive suicides claimed its twentieth victim yesterday. Arnold Tarnbrook, president and CEO of HydroTech Industries, jumped to his death from the sunroof of the Panorama Restaurant, fifty-five stories above Miami’s Jasmine Place. He left two adult children and a grandchild.
Headline News
Atlanta, GA,
Dec. 17
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On the eve of his death, Jesus is quoted as saying: “You always have the poor with you.” And ever since, people have used this partial quote to justify their greed, their lack of compassion, their callousness to poverty.
But according to the Gospels, Jesus also told a rich man, “Go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.”
Would the poor be less poor if there were no rich men? Money fuels civilization, and provides material needs. Wealth permits one to help those in need, often needs which government is ill-suited to deal with.
What would you advise a rich person to do, here in the twenty-first century? Convert his possessions to money, then walk through the skid rows of the world, giving it to derelicts? Or give it to scholarships, foundations, shelters for the homeless, and research toward solutions to the world’s problems? Or some to each?
Even if used to buy wine or drugs, it is appropriate to give money to someone destitute on the street, because he thereby experiences human compassion. But broad good can be accomplished by investing in strategically selected organizations.
There is a difference in valuing wealth solely for material gratification, and in valuing wealth for the good you can do with it. Increasingly we have the means to make poverty obsolete. What is needed is the will.
As for the person who dies while wallowing in material pleasures, he too, in time, will dwell in the richness of the spirit. Meanwhile, for now, “richness of the spirit” may seem unreal to him, unbelievable. And how can he value it when he doesn’t believe in it?
Rich or poor, let him believe what he believes, disbelieve what he disbelieves, value what he values–without being assaulted for it, physically or verbally. In time he will learn the lessons of materialism, and pass on to new lessons.
What we can do now, within limits, is inhibit him from harming others. But it is well not to restrain him too closely, for in his actions lie his lessons and our own. We interact, and through those interactions we grow. All of us, evolving together in the spirit.
From The Collected Public Lectures
of Ngunda Aran
There was a knock on the door to the Oval Office. “Madam President, it’s me. Hank.”
“Come in.”
He entered, and she fixed him with a cocked eye. “What in hell are you doing up at this hour, Groenveldt? It’s after one in the morning.”
“Checking on you, Madam President. You should be in bed.”
“The hell you say! Who assigned you as my nanny? I read awhile to clear my register of the bullshit I deal with all day long. Otherwise I dream the damn job all night, and the dreams are worse than the real thing. Frigging nightmares!”
“Maybe you should read in bed, and fall asleep reading.”
“I’m like the five hunded pound gorilla, Enrico me lad. I read where I want to.” She paused. “Don’t look at that statement too closely; it won’t bear scrutiny. And don’t tell people I weigh five hundred pounds; I’m down to two forty five. Even that damned nag Beliveau only wants me down to two ten, so two forty five isn’t half bad. Big frame, big bones, big muscles, big—never mind.”
She’d ranged from mock truculent to mock humor, but he sensed a tautness beneath the surface, a tension, something that could snap under added stress. The job, the constant crises, the frustration of trying to work with a hostile Senate were getting to her. She held the book up, the cover toward him: “The Turbulent Mirror,” she said, “by Briggs and Peat. On chaos theory, appropriately enough.”