Money Talks

I just finished watching "Inventing Anna," and noted something a lawyer said to a jury. He mentioned how some artistic agents thought up a scheme to get a skinny little guy from Hoboken onto the world's stage.  This was Frank Sinatra.

They paid a group of young girls to watch a presentation by Frank and yell and scream as though he was the greatest singer they had ever heard. The girls improvised and invented "swooning."  I remember seeing movies in the late 1940's in which young girls would pretend to faint as Frank sang.  Some even threw under-clothes at the stage.

Sneaky, but it worked.

This reminded me of something I had read recently. Using funds that were donated for other purposes, a rich politician made a deal with a casting agency to provide crowds of actors who would attend his political rallies and pretend to be his fans.

Also sneaky, but it worked.

And then, there was Citizens United v. FEC, in which "the Supreme Court asserted that corporations are people and removed reasonable campaign contribution limits, allowing a small group of wealthy donors and special interests to use dark money to influence elections."

Like Martin, I have a dream... actually several dreams, but one of them is about what money can do if it is used to benefit mankind.  Why would the world's richest persons not want to achieve lasting fame by placing a few billions into the search for a cancer cure?

Another dream is to see universal health care instituted. Medical, prescriptions, rehab, teeth care, eyecare, earcare, and everything else.  Right now, my medical insurance payments plus non-covered procedures are keeping me poor and don't even cover some necessities, such as hearing aids.

Of course, we would not want to become a communist country, but we don't want to become a "Third World" country either, which is where some politicians seem to be leading us.

Ambrose Bierce says this about being rich:

"Holding in trust and subject to an accounting the property of the indolent, the incompetent, the unthrifty, the envious and the luckless.  That is the view that prevails in the underworld, where the Brotherhood of Man finds its most logical development and candid advocacy. 

To denizens of the midworld the word means good and wise."

Mathew. Verse 19:

"Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal."

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