RUTHFULLY YOURS

Wilma Mankiller, was the first female chief of the Cherokee Nation….rsk

On June 18, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew announced that Alexander Hamilton would be replaced or diminished on the $10 bill by 2020. In the place of America’s first treasury secretary would be an as yet unannounced woman.

This decision was as disgraceful as it was bizarre. Though Lew said that the currency redesign was simply part of a scheduled update for the purpose of honoring the 100th anniversary of universal women’s suffrage, nobody expected the father of the American financial system to get the boot. Fortunately, there have been a chorus of voices from all parts of the political spectrum that have expressed anger and opposition to this unfathomable decision to remove the great Founding Father from our currency.

1. “Israelis are more satisfied with their lives than the OECD average,” according to the OECD’s (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) annual “Better Life Index.” Only Denmark, Iceland, Switzerland and Finland ranked ahead of 5th place Israel, among the 34 OECD members, as well as Brazil and Russia. The rating is based on 22 variables, such as education, health, life expectancy, average income, housing and general satisfaction. Israel’s high ranking defies its geo-political neighborhood, but is a derivative of its inherent state of mind: optimism, patriotism, family and communal responsibility and attachment to roots (Israel 21st Century, June 10, 2015).

2. “Israel was rated by expats as the most dynamic country in the world,” according to “InterNations,” the largest network for people who work and live abroad (The Huffington Report, June 12, 2015).

3. The June 15, 2015 issue of the Economist Intelligence Unit praises Israel’s economic performance, expecting a 3.4% growth in 2015 and rising in 2016, declining unemployment [currently at 5%], steady inflation (1.3%), an export surge in 2015, a narrowing 2015 trade deficit and a 2019 trade surplus, larger natural gas production/export, robust private consumption and expanding current account surplus (3% of GDP in 2014, 5.2% – 2015 and 7.4% -2019).

It’s De Blasio Time, and madmen with machetes are on the loose.
Twenty-three prior arrests, including menacing someone with a machete five years ago, and this madman is still walking the streets? Seeing a passerby’s video of Sook Yeong Im, a pretty young Korean tourist, lying on the 40th Street sidewalk after crazy career criminal Frederick Young, 43, had twice slashed open her arm with his viciously honed weapon—exposing muscle fiber and sending blood spurting everywhere—brought back in an instant the knot of fear New Yorkers carried in their stomachs in the pre-Rudy Giuliani era, when out-of-control crime was killing not just one person every four hours, 365 days a year, but also was killing Gotham itself. That the assault occurred in Bryant Park at 11:30 on a sun-drenched early-summer morning, as the victim was looking for a seat after her yoga class, seemed to unravel just about every gain that the tireless efforts of thousands over 20 years had achieved to make New York once more the capital of the world. Suddenly, it seems we’re back to Son of Sam or the Wild Man of West 96th Street.