Who Can You Believe

A friend of TNB recently posed the rhetorical question "Who Can You Believe?" to which the joking response was TNB, of course. But pondering this dilemma makes one realize that, especially if you tend to be skeptical by nature (or by profession considering that TNB was trained as an auditor) there's really not a lot to put your faith in anymore if indeed there ever was. Consider the following:

• Job Creators--- It's very difficult to believe that slightly increasing taxes on the very wealthy will prevent them from "creating jobs". Huh? Many of these people are in the financial services world, where the amount of their income (before or after tax) has no bearing on their ability or desire to create jobs. When one thinks about it, how is it possible for any politician (even a Republican) to radically change the employment picture when so many jobs have been permanently lost to outsourcing, technology and other factors that we have permitted to occur over the last 20 years or so under both parties.



• College Athletics---It's very difficult to believe that big-time college football (and basketball, to a lesser extent) is practiced by "student-athletes " who are not tainted by payoffs and other forms of cheating. And what about their coaches and some of the university administrators? The dollars involved are so huge and the temptation to skirt the rules is so strong that it's a wonder when a school's program is shown to be totally "clean" (usually it's a loser).



• Government Paralysis---It's very difficult to believe that our governments at all levels will ever operate in the best interest of the people. The extreme polarization, unwillingness to compromise and total self absorption (where the primary concern is with re-election, including raising obscene amounts of cash) sadly make it unlikely that the citizenry will ever again trust in their elected officials. Check out the polls ranking Congress, for example.

Does all this sound utterly cynical? Probably so--but it is tempered by the occasional good news such as the remarkable advancement in the treatment of the dreaded ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease), the overthrow of Muammar Ghaddafi and the Chicago Cubs firing of their general manager. Hope may not be springing eternal but there is still something to believe in.