Too much money

Barack Obama just said that I'm making too much money. When I told my wife, you should have heard what she said! When she called Obama a "Democrat" I thought that was bad enough, but the word she used before "Democrat" took me back to my Navy days. I love a girl with spirit — a conservative girl!

"One of the many shallow statements that sound good — if you don't stop and think about it — is that 'at some point, you have made enough money.' The key word in this statement, made by President Obama recently, is 'you.' There is nothing wrong with my deciding how much money is enough for me or your deciding how much money is enough for you, but when politicians think they should be deciding how much money is enough for other people, that's starting down a very slippery slope. Politicians with the power to determine each citizen's income are no longer public servants. They are public masters.

Are we really so eaten up with envy, or so mesmerized by rhetoric, that we're willing to sacrifice our own freedom by giving politicians the power to decide how much money a person can make or keep? … Once you buy the argument that some segment of the citizenry should lose their rights, because they are envied or resented, you are putting your own rights in jeopardy — quite aside from undermining any moral basis for respecting anybody's rights. You are opening the floodgates to arbitrary power. Once you open the floodgates, you can't tell the water where to go." —Economist Thomas Sowell

My beloved wife and I have lived for some 30 years in a nice house in Winter Park. I won't bore you with any details, but its more room than any two people need. However, recently we've ridden around the residential area and gotten an inferiority complex, because we have just a regular old doorway, where our front door is. I've just made arrangements with the Greek government to put a competively impressive front on our house — an exact copy, full size, of the front of the Parthenon — that oughta do it!

In 1980, after we bought our house in Winter Park, and moved back from New York to my hometown, I made plans to build a swimming pool on the strip of land between our house and the lake. Then one day my cerebral beloved wife discovered the handsome pool at the Lakemont YMCA not far from us. Since then, we have been "regulars" at the Y, and have gotten to know Bud Oliver, Alison, Curt, and the crew of helpful, likeable people who run the place. We're thankful that we don't have the trouble and expense of taking care of our own pool.

The Y serves a great purpose in our lives, and is the best money we spend per year. I hate to recommend the place only because I wouldn't want to see it overcrowded, but I've got to tell the truth — the Y is a real winner!