Gary Stein The Sun-Sentinel

August 3, 2011

Gary Stein
The Sun-Sentinel

RE: Cricket fields and modern American Liberalism – Their nexus and how your column today fails to make the fatal connection.

Big Stein,
I decided to vote against all – no exceptions, none – bond issues in 1990. I believed, believe, that they are in violation of Federal law, specifically the Truth in Lending Law.
A $100,000,000.00 bond issue to save the manatees, to fight teenage obesity and the bullying of tentative trans-gendered artistes, to shelter women of color who are single moms with children in need of a good Ritalin program AND Midnight Basketball who lack access to public transportation that could get them to a Wal*Mart where $4 prescriptions will exploit them, anything, everything, is illegal on its face.
Imagine you stumble into a used car lot. There, an enterprising suede shoe shod, electric blue slacked, with a matching restrained hibiscus shirt entrepreneur, sells you a gas guzzling, carbon belching, and polar bear drowning SUV.
He says he can arrange financing.
He must tell you how much the loan will cost if carried to term. He must tell you, doubtless invoking the sacred rule of 78, what the pre-payment penalties are. He must spell this out so that even Curly Biden will get it. Should he fail to do so you will get your car free plus 2 or 3 years of walking around money. If you have an above average werewolf on your side you could end up owning his lot.
Why are municipal bonds exempt from this?
Broward County built a cricket stadium to proclaim that they were not culturally arrogant. [Alas, the facts would support the interpretation you may be] Any sport that has a position called “silly mid-off” deserves to have a world class venue, right? The good people of Broward County should feel proud that they have been chosen to pay for this. Should cricket become part of March Madness it would be better to have a wave of tea drinking Pakis rather than a boatload of English fans, right?
Follow the math. I’ll try to write slowly.
$100,000,000.00 @ 5% for 30 years ain’t $100,000,000.00 in 30 years.
There is $150,000,000.00 in interest. Think 30 year mortgage.
The true cost of the loan is $250,000,000.00. That’s two hundred and fifty million dollars. “Pretty soon”, as Everett McKinley Dirksen used to say, “It adds up to real money.”
15 years ago, as a fresh faced newly arrived émigré, I had to explain to an earnest information officer of the Broward County Board of Education the difference between an expense budget and a capital budget. Although I spoke English it may as well have been Linear B or Pashto. She looked at me “like my nose was being eaten by weevils”. By now she’s probably a finalist for head customer service rep on the ObamaCare – That’s the word that head Hecate and the paradigmatic template of modern American Liberalism, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, wanted outlawed on the floor of the House, remember? – Death Panels.
Any chance for a bull ring?
It would be a Win/Win/Win.
It would show our multi-cultural streak.
It would cut back on excessive bovine methane eructations.
It would provide fresh beef for the homeless.
Broward County residents would be overjoyed to hit that 3 run homer.




Kevin Smith
Board Certified Life Coach