August 3, 2011 THE VILLADOM TIMES I • Page 15 What both sides need to do to save America’s credit is to put a wage ceiling on public sector jobs so people who are absurdly overpaid through imposition on the taxpayers get to live in the economic real world again. Nobody with a job funded by tax money should earn more than $100,000 unless he or she has an MD tacked on after his or her name. Do that and the fiscal catastrophe will vanish as soon as the new round of paychecks is cut. Second jobs or increased thrift are the only options for most people who work in the private sector, and even those people in the private sector who are well paid usually work or commute 60 hours a week and spend a lot of spare time “doing their homework” by studying reports, watching training videos, and generally staying on top of things. Perhaps hedge fund managers should not be able to write off country club memberships as part of the cost of doing business, although they probably close a lot of deals on the golf course. Teachers of academic subjects should not be able to land jobs based on how well they coach sports, or have the taxpayers pick up the tab for sports clinics and field trips not related to the subjects they teach. The kids may indeed be more interested in sports than they are in academics, but teachers who find academics dull and teach by rote from a base of ignorance can only contribute to the boredom and expand the ignorance. As the American student body becomes increasingly diverse and the American electorate becomes increasingly dominated by people who never served in the armed forces, teachers are not going to be able to substitute flag-waving for honest analysis or stick to outmoded textbooks that deny slavery caused the Civil War. Our relative affluence was always an excuse for whatever we did. U.S. soldiers serving in the Korean War were told that we were defending our standard of living because that was what they could understand. Those who fell into the hands of the Chinese were asked why American soldiers, who were often the sons of rural poverty, were defending rich people. A third of the Americans collaborated with the Chinese, as opposed to 10 percent of the British, and zero percent of the Turks. The Americans had never been taught that many aspects of America are unique and worth defending. Few people will die for somebody else’s money. We need to inculcate Americans with the value of Christianity taken seriously in everyday life and the importance of representative government where at least the local politicians are often honest. The police actually rely on evidence, and the upper-level people generally balk at murder. None of these civic virtues is universal outside the United States. These virtues are worth fighting for. We may not have any affluence to defend if we keep taxing businesses out of business to pay for entitlements. Write to our representatives and tell them not to lynch the hedge fund managers and the stockbrokers before they have a chance to arm themselves or escape to Switzerland. After that, we can decline to lynch the landlords, even though nobody likes paying rent, even to people who saved their money to buy the rentals instead of spending it on wardrobes from Paris or designer drugs. Physicians and lawyers, if they are good at what they do, also make a lot of money. We can try not to tax them to the point where they would rather get government jobs. Any farmer with a tractor and a combine instead of a mule or an ox could also be a target. Heck, they get all kinds of government benefits so they can keep producing the cheapest and most varied food, and some of the safest. In the end, if we attack people for succeeding on their own, we may be left with entitlement people and the politicians who protect their right to live well on non-productive jobs. We will then tank. Here is what we can do right now: Quit eating so much meat. Many beans pack the same protein at less than 10 percent of the cost of meat. But take care: Soybeans are used for stock feed, a process that now is now destroying the world’s rainforests and leading to the kind of summer heat that most of us have never seen before – a worse threat to life than any of the silliness going on in Washington. Quit cutting down trees. Steer clear of site plans for developments of wooded areas, and don’t allow trees to be cut down unless they’re moribund and a serious threat to life or property. Quit fussing over lawns with fertilizer that poisons the local streams and ponds, and with irrigation that takes away from the water pressure in faucets and fire hydrants. Ask the landscapers to put in shrubs that function well in a prolonged drought. Any lawn that isn’t reserved for sports activities should be seen as a disgrace. We need water pressure more than we need to show off or to pretend it’s still 1950 and we’re the only country with the Bomb and an international industrial profile. Deal with those problems that have individual or local-government solutions. The politicians can’t save us if we won’t try to save ourselves. Here is a Polish proverb I have always liked: When the wind fails, row. The windbags in Washington on both sides have failed us. Grab an oar and save America one kitchen table or one front or back yard at a time. If we don’t all row, we’ll all sink. Pity the hedge fund managers. They were the only designated villains I remember either side mentioning as the targets for the fiscal cuts needed to save our economy as Barack Obama and John Boehner tacitly blamed one another’s factions for the decline and fall of Social Security and veterans’ benefits. Hedge fund managers are ironic victims. I know one. He graduated from Princeton with high honors after paying for most of his education with his family’s money, got an MBA from Stanford which be paid for with his own money, and is now helping people to protect other people’s money in an economy he describes as “a slow-motion train wreck.” He goes to church and gives money to charity, is kind to his wife, and doesn’t breed cobras in the bathtub. He doesn’t transmit HIV or own a gun, but he is a villain all the same. He earns money instead of begging for it. In the state where this villain lives – he rents because he can’t afford to buy a house – the legislature just decided to allow illegal aliens to apply for funds to pay for college. How will that help Americans cope with the fact that our manufacturing jobs are now in China and our office-equipment advice all comes from India and the Philippines? People in these countries have a right not to starve. They have a right to come to America as tourists. They even have a right to immigrate, but they don’t have a right to come here illegally and then expect the taxpayers to take up the slack so they can finish college, and maybe even graduate school. Imagine this: If immigrants who don’t come here legally do really well in college, they could become hedge fund managers. It would then be possible to criticize them without being pegged as a racist or a fascist. So, while President Obama wants to save “the middle class” by preserving every entitlement program that survived the death of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry Truman’s expulsion of 369 communists from the federal government, the Speaker of the House Boehner wants to save “small business” by taxing “big business.” Just who gets to define “small business” and “big business?” Is a small business one that relies on family members and a couple of part-time high school or college kids, or is it one that has fewer than 500 or 5,000 employees? It’s long past time to do something about the oil companies and the tobacco companies, because the profits they obtain from polluting the air we all have to breathe are outrageous and counter-productive to a healthy environment. Slamming down on highly educated, intelligent people who make a lot of money without hurting anybody is also counter-productive. The rich should indeed be denied unfair tax breaks, but their trickle-down contributions to the economy through purchase of expensive autos, designer clothes, jewelry, vacations, and gourmet food help to provide income for the people who stock and sell these things. Attacks on the rich, unless they hurt the environment or deny their employees fair wages, are part of the politics of envy. These people earned that money, or their parents or grandparents earned if for them. Would we really be better off if the money that went into the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the old Metropolitan Opera House and Carnegie Hall had been spent on entitlement programs? I do not think we would. When windbags fail… Memorial Pond (continued from page 10) held several cleanups there and the area was graded, a bluestone patio and four benches were installed, water and electrical service were provided to the site, and a flagpole was installed there. On May 18, 2006, Kathy Psirogianes, whose brother died in the terrorist attack, and Jo Ann Romano met with then Mayor G. Thomas Donch to discuss and lead the fundraising to complete the Franklin Lakes Memorial Pond and to plan the dedication ceremony for the five-year anniversary of the attack. Maura DeNicola and Paulette Ramsey, who were both councilwomen at the time, guided the committee. That Memorial Day weekend, the committee put buckets in different stores and collected over $2,000 to launch the fundraising. In June 2006, the borough council passed a resolution authorizing the reallocation of up to $8,500 from the borough’s 2006 budget for the care, maintenance, and upgrading of the Memorial Pond. On July 13, 2006, 250 residents attended a Taste to Remember fundraiser at the Memorial Pond and the community donated more than $50,000, including a matching $25,000 donation by an anonymous Franklin Lakes family, which was to be used for the installation of a waterfall to aerate the pond. The event was planned by Romano, who chaired the activities, Psirogianes, and a committee of volunteers. They also worked with the board of education and ran a Pennies to Remember drive in the schools. A walk-athon held that September raised over $7,000, which was set aside for the proposed bridge at the site. A monument, which was located opposite the flagpole, was unveiled at an interdenominational dedication ceremony. The Franklin Lakes Memorial Pond Committee met monthly during the following years, addressing maintenance issues and working on the final phase of the pond which involve the bridge and waterfall. There were millings issues in the parking lot behind Tommy John Field that caused major delays in the progress with the waterfall, but the committee continued to meet regularly and focused on the bridge. “The bridge then became the Eagle Project of Nathanial Clarke who met with then Mayor Maura DeNicola and the committee monthly and with the help of the Boy Scouts and their fathers a beautiful bridge was built that was dedicated on Sept. 13, 2009,” Romano advised. The committee continued to meet and work with the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection on the appropriate permits required for the wetlands at the site. A flood hazard applicability determination was received in November 2010, and Boswell Engineering guided the borough through the proper paperwork so the applications could be signed and filed in the spring of 2011. The NJAC approved the permit on June 15, 2011. “The waterfall is near completion under the direction of John Meeks and will be a beautiful part of the Commemoration Ceremony on Sept. 10 at 4 p.m.,” Romano said. “This memorial has been conceived through the love and support of the entire community. It was made possible through the labor of love and support from many corporations and businesses as well as the generous donations from many friends and neighbors in town. Work on the memorial has proceeded under the administration of three separate mayors and councils and it has been led by a team of dedicated committee members who have shown their patriotism as well as passion for the pond through the years. “This pond is and will continue to be a vital part of the Franklin Lakes Community,” Romano emphasized. Psirogianes added, “This pond is a reminder that we must never forget what happened that fateful day and this memorial is a tribute to all the fallen, as well as all of the brave rescue workers, firemen, police and our courageous soldiers who still fight for our freedom today.”