Things I think I think

I don't remember who used to start their PG columns with the line "Things I think I think." Perhaps it was the great Phil Musick or the late great Tom Hritz, but today I borrow the "Things I think I think" introduction for a couple of things (I think).

1) For the seventh year in a row, the state had missed its deadline to pass its budget. What a life those state legislators live! If you and I miss our deadlines, we get yelled at or worse. In Harrisburg, there is a general shrugging.

I suggest that a law be passed requiring that they lose 5 percent of their salary and benefits with each day past the budget deadline. That would concentrate their minds. But who would pass such a sensible law? Aye, and there's the rub.

2) Bernie Madoff, master fraudster, was sentenced to 150 years in prison earlier this week. (Who says there is no good news in the paper?)

He will be very, very old when that is done - and that's my only problem. There's no truth in advertising here. While the rich are different from you and I, they don't live 150 years.

If the aim is to reassure the public he will never see the light of day, why not just sentence him to imprisonment "for the term of his natural life." Yeah, and while they are at it, force him to watch the Shopping Channel or a Public Television fund drive for every last day.

I know, I know, it would be cruel and unusual punishment.