Craig's Corner

I found $20 the other day. The bill was folded up and stuffed in the coin pocket of my jeans. What it was originally intended for is lost to my middle-aged memory and instead the discovery is a nice happenstance. It’s not like I lost the money or had a huge lottery win, but instead it was what Dad used to call “mad money” that can be used for fun purposes. I think he made that up, but I still like the concept. As I contemplated what to do with the largess I had squirreled away unintentionally I discovered that I wasn’t the only one who hides money. The CIA has been planting money in plain sight in the most terrifying way. It’s been well reported that in 2009 the CIA  gave $1 million al Qaida to free an Afghan diplomat. Oops…the U.S. was supposed to be fighting against al Qaida. The Department of Defense lost $8.7 billion of the $9.1 billion intended for infrastructure in rebuilding Iraq in 2010. Reread those figures. Billions.  This is money that was misplaced or...

My grandmother died when I was a junior in high school. It was 1982. She was the first major figure in my life that passed away. In the ensuing 34 years I’ve lost my mother’s parents, my father, friends, acquaintances, classmates…lots of people, but not as many as others I know. How do you value somebody’s life? Almost universally for me the losses have been emotional. But there is, of course, the practical side. I remember contacting Social Security after Dad died and being told of the $255 death benefit we would be getting. His life insurance policy had a different valuation which was based on a whole series of things that were agreed to when the policy was taken. That was 2010 and I don’t think much about the finances any more, let alone of the financial impact of my grandmother’s death in 1982. Anybody who has passed away in the past 33 years and had been killed by terrorism, then it’s a different story. The CIA expanded the Survivor Benefit for “survivors of all federal em...

Death is sad. For somebody of my vintage I’ve lost a number of family and friends over the years. When a peer goes it’s particularly unsettling because we are facing our own mortality. Death is part of life. Moving from the morbid to the sublime: the end is a necessary part of life and for our growth as people and as a society. And then there are things that cease that represent the stopping point of an era or an experiment. We are all experiencing such a loss now. Al Jazeera America shut down on Tuesday, April 12, 2016. It lived for just under 3 years, having gone live on August 20, 2013. It leaves a big gaping hole in quality the media environment. Well, the hole might not be as big as I’d like it to have been. The channel attracted some 10,000 viewers per hour at its low point and a high of less than 100,000 while Fox, CNN, MSNBC draw in the millions and the major networks the tens of millions. Carriage issues (having the channel on a cable provider) were part of tha...

I have a recollection that at some point in my youth running around playing a game “Liar Liar Pants on Fire.” What the rules were, how the ‘truth’ was determined are a foggy notion today. It might just have been my middle child syndrome of tattling on my siblings…or being tattled on! Researching the idea to refresh my memory I was amused to find it’s a book and a board game as well as fan fiction . It’s a popular concept. It is, of course, standard fare in U.S. politics. Ranker is a site where “U.S. politicians that have been caught lying or have been suspected of lying.” Virtually every major political figure this century is on the list – from Barack Obama to Richard Nixon. You can click on somebody and add your opinion…fun but not very scientific. CBS News summarized it in a report in 2012: “Here are three things most Americans take as an article of faith: The sky is blue. The pope is Catholic. And politicians are liars.”  Politifact has built an entire b...