David McElroy

I never had any heroes when I was growing up. Most kids idolize a parent or teacher or somebody. I realized today that the closest I’ve ever come to seeing someone as a hero is Steve Jobs. That’s why his sudden resignation from Apple Wednesday left me with a lump in my throat.

Jobs is a polarizing figure. Most people who are familiar with him and his work either love him or hate him. He doesn’t give much room for middle ground, because he has strong opinions, a strong vision for how things ought to be, and an apparent internal need to stamp his vision on the world around him.

“I want to put a ding in the universe,” he said long ago.

Jobs could be a jerk to work for when he was young. He was arrogant, mean-spirited and rude. He mellowed a lot with maturity, but he was still too strong for some people’s tastes. I see him as a terribly flawed but wildly talented visionary genius. If I could find a way to emulate a tenth of what he’s accomplished, I’d be very happy with my earthly success.

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Last fall, Rick Perry published a book called “Fed Up!” in which he called Social Security “a crumbling monument to the failure of the New Deal.” He was telling the truth then, but he’s running from the truth now — because he wants to be elected president.

In the book, Perry asserted that Social Security is unconstitutional, and he said the program was an affront to respect for the Constitution and limited government. He compared it to a “bad disease” that’s continued to spread. Perry said that individuals should be allowed to own and control their own retirement plans, so they could have “a retirement system that is no longer set up like an illegal Ponzi scheme.”

Every word he said there was accurate, but he’s now running from that truth. According to the Wall Street Journal, his campaign claims that the views in last year’s book — published less than a year ago — don’t reflect Perry’s current views:

“His communications director, Ray Sullivan, said Thursday that he had ‘never heard’ the governor suggest the program was unconstitutional. Not only that, Mr. Sullivan said, but ‘Fed Up!’ is not meant to reflect the governor’s current views on how to fix the program.”

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We found out this week that the Federal Reserve Bank’s secret lending to the blue chip banks of Wall Street in 2008 added up to $1.2 trillion. Not million. Not billion. That’s trillion.

Just in case you’re numb from hearing numbers such as this all the time lately, let’s put that into perspective. In 2008, the federal government brought in $2.5 trillion in all forms of revenue. So the government did the equivalent of handing out nearly half of every penny it collected from us and handed it to Wall Street banks.

The story told by the advocates of this financial insanity is that their actions “saved the economy” when the crisis hit, but what’s their evidence? The things they keep predicting don’t happen. The things they prescribe as solutions don’t solve the problems. So why do governments keep listening to these voodoo masters?

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