HOW I SPENT MY MONEY WITHOUT EVEN TRYING

Well,   technically, my money was spent for me.

I just paid about $350,000 to run buses in Israel!!  The buses will be filled with people who promise to vote socialist in today’s election.

Of course, the burden is not entirely on me;  all Americans will share in this duty.    (One socialist leader helps another socialist leader-to-be, no matter what the people want.   How fun that they have our tax money to do it with.)

We’ve sent some professional political agitators to Israel too, to help with their own agitators.     (Their cost is not completely figured into the 350 grand.)   What do “the people” want?  I don’t know,  but here is a photo of a very large demonstration against the socialists because they know their taxes will become unaffordably high with socialists in office:

A few of my friends are either socialist or some other name that denotes extreme Left.    They are good-hearted people and want the State to be kind to others.   And they spur me on towards greater charity  towards those in need.    But a Leftist political party doesn’t achieve charity;  it doesn’t fix problems, and by its very nature must prolong the problem in order to have a reason for its own existence.    And it must make other people pay for its own ideas of “charity.”   Which means we have less of our own money to be charitable with.  Which is partly why they are demonstrating against ruinous taxes.

This whole thing reminds me of my very, very young parents when they first moved to Chicago.  My father wanted to do the “adult” thing and vote for his first big presidential election.    He called up to find out where he and my mother should go to vote — and there came a van,  a mini-bus,  collecting people in the neighborhood,  telling them where — and how — to vote.   (This is Chicago, after all.)    Whatever was said on that van convinced my father to never, ever vote again.  Even at such a young age my father was a man of honor and of principle and of honesty.

My father never said the word “politics”  without using the preface “dirty.”    He pointed out to me that Chicago Pond Scum always rises to the top of the political machine —   and now it seems the Pond Scum has overflowed . . . all the way into Israel.

I’m sorry for that.  We have no business trying to influence other people’s elections.  I have no “dog in the fight” over there in Israel.  Likud vs. Labor?  Either outcome will affect Middle East politics, and consequently world affairs.

My father taught me to recognize “dirty politics”  when I see it,  but he would have been outraged to find out I had paid for it.

Perhaps the very young rabbi in the photo above has the best solution.    He is Rabbi Chitiz,  not yet 30 years old,  older than my father’s first attempt to vote.     He said we should  (that is Israeli citizens should)  consult the Talmud.    There,  with many citations from the Talmud and form the Bible,  he found out that the best ballot is one that’s had all the names and descriptions of the people removed!     “We should vote for the empty ballot itself!”     What a commentary!!

(You can read about him in today’s  Haaretz  and in  Jerusalem Post.)

Who says scholars don’t have a sense of humor!