Scott Burns on PBS Sunday & Sunday

[Telly]

Scott Burns is the guest on a 1/2 hour show called "McCuistion". The topic is "The Coming Generational Storm" (sounds familiar ).
Part I is this weekend, Part II is next weekend.

On DFW PBS on successive weekends:

Sunday, June 24, 1:00pm
Part 1 of 2. Author Scott Burns.

Repeat: Friday, June 29, 1:30am
Part 1 of 2. Author Scott Burns.


Sunday, July 1, 1:00pm
Conclusion. Author Scott Burns.

Repeat: Friday, July 6, 1:30am
Conclusion. Author Scott Burns.

If interested, search your local PBS listings for "McCuistion" to see if it is carried in your market, maybe on a different day or time. I'm going to watch, if I remember...

[Basenji]

Thanks so much, Telly!

Warning: this show will "make you either want to throw up or do bodily harm to your elected representatives"

This show appears to be only on KERA, the generally superb Dallas public television channel (I used to live near Dallas many years ago.)

But ... good news ... the video for this show is already available "worldwide" !!! (I watched it at 2am Sunday morning.)
Go to:
The Foundation for Responsible Television
and you'll see this text:

---

Generational Storm - Part 1
June 24th, 2007

Direct Federal debt of almost $9 trillion and over $50 trillion in promises for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid could lead to future generations paying twice as much in taxes as we do today. How did this situation develop?
The Panelists:

Scott Burns, Syndicated Columnist, Author: The Coming Generational Storm
---

and the following link to the video:
(29min, 8sec)
http://www.mccuistiontv.com/images/s.../06242007a.WMV
[For some reason, they also have links to "part 2" and "part 3" - why? I don't know. Part 2 appears to be roughly the middle third of the show (9min, 44 sec), and Part 3 appears to be roughly the third third of the show (9min, 45 sec).

Terribly sorry to inform you that it is in the atrocious WMV (ugh!) format, but hey, we should just be grateful to get it in any format, eh? I'd highly recommend using VLC as the media viewer for these files. Get VLC from:
http://www.videolan.org/

No real review here, but a couple observations of a few snippets [please note: intentional effort on my part to be non-political]:
-Future funding for Social Security an enormous problem
-Future funding for Medicare[/Medicaid] an even bigger problem,
-Disenchanted Republicans decrying federal budget profligacy by Republicans (and Democrats),
-We should expect frighteningly huge federal tax increases (doubling) for Americans of the future (kids and grandkids),
-Entertaining fold-out-paper demonstration of national debt growth, etc. -Solution? the Tooth Fairy. (I'm not kidding ... he said that ... but I think/hope Scott Burns was kidding.)
-Host: "They don't care about the children."
-Host: long quote from Ron Paul
[note: a recent Scott Burns column praised Ron Paul's fiscal policies, and I seem to recall he contributed to Paul's campaign. Paul is sometimes described as rather libertarian - fiscally very conservative and socially very liberal. He seems to infuriate most Republicans and most Democrats - on different points.]

[unnecessary tangent: Ron Paul once called for investigation of an Office of National Drug Control Policy employee named SCOTT BURNS, who apparently spent federal funds writing to state prosecutors urging them to lobby for tougher state criminal statutes regarding marijuana use.]

[Again, please note I'm trying to avoid expressing my own political views, and I don't mean to encourage a political discussion. And sorry if I failed to mention aspects of the show you find to be more important than the few I included - hey, it's 3am, ok?]

Next week - Part Two - Solutions

This show archive page covers a number of interesting topics:
The Foundation for Responsible Television

[teejayevans]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Basenji ....good stuff...

Thanks for the pointers!
TJ

[Basenji]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Basenji [please note: intentional effort on my part to be non-political]

Yikes - the things one says at 3am!
In the light of daytime, I see that the professed attempt to be non-political seems silly - so ... clarification: I tried to not add any political commentary to statements already made by others. In any event ... uh ... never mind [just ignore the references to Republicans and Democrats, and focus on the frightening debacle that is the federal budget deficit]

[Telly]

Well, I watched it Sunday... It was obvious to me that Scott Burns's medium is the printed word, not video! The thought "He couldn't sell ice water to an Arab" went through my mind. McCuistion seemed decent and tried to help out, one slide he showed IIRC was right out of Burn's & Kotlikoff's book, and SB couldn't briefly summarize it for the viewer and point out why it was important.

This is the first time that I have seen SB other than in a thumbnail pic in the newspaper next to his column. I was disappointed. It's not like I thought he should be up there rapping to a "Coming Generational Storm" or something like that. But good gosh man, if this is something you strongly believe in, show a bit of life, and be able to summarize your points!

To be fair, if he had a bad catfish dinner the evening before, and was up all night with the wastebasket and throne, then I take back everything I said, and wish him well

The only value I saw in the show was the fold-out chart of the federal debt that McCuistion had put together. That had a lot of impact. The studio wasn't wide enough to handle the sharp increase in debt in the last 25 years or so!