COLUMBUS: Harvard University, which has produced more Presidents and Congressmen than any other school, kicked out 60 students for cheating on a final exam. The class they cheated in was “Introduction to Congress.” Introduction? Those students acted like they were already IN Congress. These poor students, they should have stayed honest at least until they got to “Advanced Congressional Ethics.” That’s where they learn how to commit chicanery surreptitiously so they can still get re-elected.

What Harvard ought to be teaching ‘em is economy and accounting. Not just Harvard, but  Yale and Princeton and the rest of ‘em that proudly send their grads to Washington. Maybe the Ivy schools are teaching ‘em, but they seem to forget all they learned when they get within ten miles of the Potomac. Budget? Who needs a budget. Debt? We still have a credit card, don’t we.

All I know is what I read in the paper, and today the McClatchy Newspapers informed us that the federal debt is not so dire. They say it’ll be at least 10 or 20 years before we turn into Greece. Boy, that’s encouraging. They say recent deficit reduction actions by Congress and the President, if I got it figured right, means the total debt in 2023 will only be about $28 Trillion instead of $31 Trillion. The article went on to say we might want to “tweak programs” to reduce spending a bit, such as reducing the inflation index for Social Security and cutting farm subsidies. Sure, that’ll fix the economy.

Speaking of Social Security, if the age for receiving those retirement payments had been indexed for longevity when it was passed in 1935, the age when you could start receiving it today would be 81. Now, I’m not suggesting that, but 70 years ago for every person receiving a payment there were 16 paying in, and now it’s down to 2. People are already delaying retirement plans, so raising the age to 72 for S.S. (and Medicare) is not so outrageous.

In the Super Bowl, the Baltimore Ravens built a big lead, the lights went out, and then they held on to beat the favored 49ers, 34-31. For those of you who only watched the game for the commercials, the best one was Paul Harvey’s “So God made a Farmer”, by Dodge Ram. The most puzzling commercial was the Goat for Sale. Is a goat eating a lot of Doritos supposed to represent an endorsement? Goats will eat anything: weeds, tin cans, old tires, and they have been known to chew on electric lines. (That may explain the lights going out.)

Did you watch the Puppy Bowl during halftime? As I understand it, the purpose of having 60 puppies frolicking on a “football field” was to encourage adoption of those puppies and others across the country. This may be more entertaining than a lip-syncing Beyonce (or even a lip-singing Beyonce), but honestly, I like the Bikini Bowl better, with or without the option of adoption.

Historic quotes by Will Rogers:
“The government can help us on everything — if we just furnish ’em the money to do it with.” Undated notes
“There is not a man in this country that can’t make a living for himself and his family. But he can’t make a living for them AND his Government, too, not the way this Government is living. What the Government has got to do is live as cheap as the people.” DT #1990, Dec. 20, 1032
“We cuss ‘em and joke about ‘em, but they are all good fellows at heart; and if they wasn’t in (Congress), why, they would be doing something else against us that might be worse.” Saturday Evening Post, July 24, 1926