Bernanke: Baby Boomers Will Strain U.S.

Unless Social Security and Medicare are revamped, the massive burden from retiring baby boomers will place major strains on the nation’s budget and the economy, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said Wednesday.

"Reform of our unsustainable entitlement programs" should be a priority, he said in prepared remarks to the Economics Club of Washington. "The imperative to undertake reform earlier rather than later is great," Bernanke added.

It marked the Fed chief’s most extensive comments to date on the challenges facing the United States with the looming retirement of 78 million baby boomers.

In his remarks, Bernanke did not offer Congress and the Bush administration recommendations on how the massive entitlement programs should be changed. Efforts by the administration to overhaul the Social Security program - once a centerpiece of President Bush’s second-term agenda - sputtered last year, meeting resistance from Republicans and Democrats alike.

As the population ages, the nation will have to choose among higher taxes, less non-entitlement spending by the government, a reduction in spending on entitlement programs, a sharply higher budget deficit or some combination thereof, Bernanke said.

No I kid you not.  That is the claim of a GA woman who is seeking to ban Harry Potter in schools.

She claims that references to witches are an attempt to indoctrinate kids into Wicca.

Ga. Mother Seeks Harry Potter Ban

A suburban county that sparked a public outcry when its libraries temporarily eliminated funding for Spanish-language fiction is now being asked to ban Harry Potter books from its schools.

Laura Mallory, a mother of four, told a hearing officer for the Gwinnett County Board of Education on Tuesday that the popular fiction series are an "evil" attempt to indoctrinate children in the Wicca religion.

Some common sense prevails:

Board of Education attorney Victoria Sweeny said that if schools were to remove all books containing reference to witches, they would have to ban "Macbeth" and "Cinderella."

"There’s a mountain of evidence for keeping Harry Potter," she said, adding that the books don’t support any particular religion but present instead universal themes of friendship and overcoming adversity.

But she has continued her allegations:

‘Ban Harry Potter or face more school shootings’

I get to go to court this morning.  My son committed a crime and has a mitigation hearing on his fine.  Actually, to be technical, it wasn’t a crime, it was a civil infraction, a sort of non driving speeding ticket.

His crime? Possession of  tobacco by a minor.

I don’t personally smoke, I quit that habit in 1991, and when I tried to restart in 1997, I got so sick I gave up.  And I am no particular fan of smoking anyway, as my late mother in law had lung cancer (though she died of other causes) and my mother presently is in a kind of semi remission in her own battle with the disease.

But other parents do, and of course our kids learn by example, so there you go.   Kids will smoke.  Then peer pressure moves in and they help other kids learn.  Despite the more then sufficient evidence of it’s dangers, kids still are attracted to the lure and learn to smoke at young ages (he is 16).

But the ban bothers me, as does the social stigma against the smokers, as outlined in my previous blog entries: