No wonder lawyers, who control the legal system, have fought so hard, and with great success, against "no fault" insurance. No fault, no lawsuits. No lawsuits, no lunch.

The first American insurance company was the Friendly Society for the Mutual Insurance of Houses Against Fire, founded in Charles Town in South Carolina, in 1735.

Having no national system of catastrophic health insurance, we have, through the courts, managed to patch together pieces of a not very satisfactory one.

Man's natural life span, 75 to 90 years or so, has not increased. It is the number of us who manage to attain it that has increased.

There were no jobs created in America from 1945, when the war ended, through 2003. How could there be? Taxes were too high. Preposterously so under Eisenhower, Kennedy, Nixon, Reagan (who left office with a 28 percent rate on long-term capital gains) and Bush the Elder.

Nobody wants campaign finance reform more than me. It would save me a fortune.

The best thing I have are 5 percent bonds from 1780, denominated from $1 to $20. As far as I can tell, they are obligations from the United States of America, so I should be able to walk down to the Federal Reserve and redeem the uncanceled ones. With 217 years of accrued interest, for a $20 bond, that's about $800,000.