outskirts of Bluffton …photo by Joe (…the painter)
Keeping up my populist image, not to mention having to pay for rent, food, gas… I was doing some exterior painting recently at an artist studio on the outskirts of Bluffton, adjacent to the Bluffton University Nature Preserve. Scenic setting. On my coffee breaks, I read a National Geographic article on “Conservation in America.” One of the statements that most stood out: “…some people have attempted to reconcile conservation with capitalism.” For instance, the Cumberland Forest Project, with only moderate, targeted logging, would never make enough money for investors — *unless, of course, you also sold credits on the carbon market around the trees that weren’t logged. And speaking of economic things… While I don’t have access to Janet Yellen, I did have access to Laurence Lutvak today. He is visiting the area from Massachusetts, is a financial advisor, and stopped in the office for a chat. (*I try to stay accessible to the public as possible. Wink.) It turns out, when he was younger, Mr. Lutvak worked on the Fred Harris campaign. Harris was a Democrat Senator from Oklahoma and vied for the Democratic Presidential nomination in both 1972 and ’76. Mr. Lutvak came across as quite knowledgeable about the economy, government, and a combination thereof. He said, for instance, that Social Security is, indeed, in jeopardy, and perhaps — as just one approach — there should be an income ceiling on who could draw from the SS Fund, in order to help keep it buoyant for the next generation. Our campaign has a similar stance. But the $64,000 question on this one would be: “What would, say, a yearly income cutoff point be?” Mr. Lutvak said he is also an advocate for continuing to fund Ukraine, in regard to the war. He said the money we are sending (last allotment was $60 billion) is a “…drop in the bucket,” in regard to the U.S. budget. But more importantly, he (anecdotally) said that this is an existential struggle “…of the good guys against the bad guys.”
