Obama, Netanyahu & Middle East Strategy, Guaranteed Life Insurance, a Vargas Girl and a Visit from a Butterfly

                                                                                                                  

Obama, Netanyahu and Middle East Strategy

Bibi Netanyahu’s visit with President Obama last week was not the most pleasant of encounters for either of them.  Supporters of the State of Israel do not like the President’s feeling about Israeli settlements (a lot of Israelis don’t like the settlements either.) nor the President's voicing his concern about the many Palestinian civilian casualties in Gaza. A current issue is a proposed Israeli apartment development.

 

The area which Israel plans to develop with an apartment complex is in an East Jerusalem neighborhood (Givat HaMatos) just over the line from the Israeli portion of Jerusalem in Israel along the major north-south highway leading out of Jerusalem to Bethlehem.  This is not a "settlement" on the West Bank, but in an area far before any border checkpoint is reached entering the West Bank.

Furthermore, the President is unhappy with Netanyahu’s reluctance to depart from the status quo and rush to compromise on the issue of establishing a Palestinian state without first securing absolute and permanent guarantees that such a state would not pose a military threat to Israel.  To hear the rantings of Palestinian leaders, and listening to what is being taught in their schools about ultimately destroying the State of Israel, his position is totally understandable.  And Barack Obama understands that.  Netanyahu further continues to emphasize the importance of preventing Iran from going nuclear, a position which Obama must be very tentative on, because of his possible need for Iranian cooperation in attaining a Middle East solution.  Bibi believes Iran to be part of the problem and not part of  the solution.

 

Obama is dealing with a host of problems in the Middle East, and he views Israel within the context of all of them.  In the preceding blog, I mentioned several “bargaining chips” which the President must take into consideration in determining the direction of our overall Middle East strategy in dealing with the Islamic State, Bashir al-Assad and the future of the region.  I wrote:

"There are a lot of bargaining chips which can be used in going in this direction.  They are related to Iran’s nuclear aspirations and desire to be the dominant power in its region, Russia’s desire to re-form what was once the USSR, the removal of Assad from power in Syria, the role of Turkey, the lessening dependence of the world on Middle Eastern petroleum, the borders of an independent Kurdistan and the future relationship of Israel to the Islamic states around it." 

To be most effective in the Middle East, Obama’s position is enhanced by the appearance of a distancing between Israel and the United States.  The reality, however, is that the both Houses of the Congress and the American people would never permit this to happen.   Netanyahu know this.  Obama does too.  It is difficult to determine where posturing ends and truth begins.

In regard to the upcoming Senate and House races, the position the President takes on this issue can only add to the problems with which he has already burdened Democratic candidates, such as supposed problems with the Affordable Care Act and assorted inefficiencies, major and minor, in various parts of the Executive branch’s operation.  If the Republicans don’t secure control of the Senate in November, it will not be because the President hasn’t given them enough issues on which to campaign against Democrats, Israel included.

Jack Lippman


                                                                     

News from the Butterfly Garden - Giant Swallowtail Visitor


 

The other day a Giant Swallowtail visited our Butterfly Garden.  This Papilio Crespbontes was attracted by the wild lime tree and the calliandra which it is pictured circling.  The camera on my iPhone didn't do justice to the butterfly's bright yellow trim on its otherwise black wings.  

Otherwise, there remain an occasional Monarch in the garden as well as a few Zebra Longwings, the state butterfly of Florida.  The zebra-like yellow and black stripes on that species' wings suggest the prison uniforms ultimately worn by some politicians in the State of Florida.  I suppose that is why it is the state butterfly here.
JL

                                                                


Guaranteed Life Insurance For Seniors

This item is directed at our Senior Citizen readers.  But it is of value to anyone who might have relatives in that category, so spend a minute or so reading on.

Lately, there have been more and more ads on television (not to speak of the internet or traditional mail) making available limited amounts of insurance for seniors, usually up to a maximum of $50,000, which can never be cancelled, nor subject to a premium increase, and most importantly, requiring no medical questions whatsoever of applicants.  Every applicant is accepted, even those on death's doorstep!  How can they do it?

The catch on all of these policies (which is not mentioned in the advertisements unless you read the very small print flashed on the screen for a few seconds) is that for the first two years, the only death benefit the insurance company pays is a return of premiums paid, plus a little interest for deaths not resulting from accidents.  So death claims on the really sick people who apply, and die within 24 months, are avoided!  As for those who survive two years, their beneficiaries will indeed get the full death benefit, but these insurance companies are not giving anything away there either.  Read on.

These policies are advertised as “whole life insurance policies” and that is what they are.  That means that, within the structure of the policy, a portion of the premium for each year is used to provide a certain amount of pure term insurance for that year at the insured’s age with the rest being put aside to accumulate a cash value fund, which will be paid out as part of the death benefit to the beneficiary.   

Now, this cash value is calculated to grow on a guaranteed basis until a very advanced age, usually 95 or 100, at which point it is sufficient to equal the policy’s full death benefit.  Before that point is reached, however, the insurance company figures our exactly how much pure term insurance is needed over and above that cash value to make the full death benefit available anytime the insured dies, and that comes out of the premium payment.  

Insurance company actuaries know precisely how many individuals at any age will die before their next birthday, and how much that term insurance to pay for these death claims should cost at every age, and precisely how much of that term insurance will be necessary to supplement the growing “cash value” portion of the death benefit so that it equals the policy's full death benefit at any point while the it is in effect.  That term cost is provided by setting aside a portion of the guaranteed level premium for the policy, with the rest of the premium going into the cash value part of the death benefit.

This is how these policies work and there is nothing unusual or wrong about this because that is more or less the way all whole life insurance policies work.  The premium remains the same, resulting in a level premium which in the policy’s early years is far in excess of what pure term insurance for the full death benefit would cost, and in the policy’s later years, is far less than what pure term insurance for the policy's full death benefit would cost.  The ever-increasing cash value makes the amount of term insurance needed less with each passing year, and that is necessary because at older ages, term costs become very, very expensive.  By the time the cash value approaches the full death benefit, term costs will be prohibitive, but fortunately, there would be little need for term insurance at that point. 

But the insurance companies and their actuaries are not dummies and know that even those insureds who survive two years may not be in the best of health, or else why would they be buying this kind of policy, they reason.  (Usually, applicants have some sort of medical history involving cancer, heart disease or kidney disease within the past few years which would disqualify them from getting a "regular" policy.)   

So to compensate for this, they take the pure vanilla cost of the term insurance part of the death benefit, a cost based on insurance applicants who have answered health questions and who have been found to be fully qualified for a life insurance policy, and perhaps double that cost or increase it in some significant manner to be able to pay for the increased amount of death claims which life insurance policies issued to a policyholders who never had to answer health questions will produce, even after two years!   

This artificially increased cost of term insurance, along with an amount necessary to fund that growing cash value, is developed into that guaranteed level premium for this kind of policy, which may or may not be a good deal, depending on when the Grim Reaper decides to pay a visit.
                                                Illustrations such as this rarely, if ever, appear in life insurance advertisements, but really they should since this is what their product is all about.

Just thought this information would be useful.
JL

                                                       

A Calendar Pin-Up Girl for October
It's October, and here's another pin-up girl painted by Alberto Vargas, the Peruvian artist who invented the pin-up girl.  This one is the Esquire Calendar page for October 1948.  If you were alive at the time, what were you doing then?  Get out a magnifying glass and check out the poetry on the calendar page. Would (or could) anyone write anything like that today ... and get it published? 



The Federal Government tried to take away Esquire Magazine's Second Class mailing privileges for publishing Vargas' art work.  The magazine won in the Supreme Court, but Esquire stopped publishing them anyway.  In the 1960s, Playboy Magazine took over the collection, publishing them periodically and saving Vargas from financial ruin.  Thank you, Hugh Hefner!  

JL                                                             

                                                                   

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