Normally, I don't pay much attention to television ads. Like everyone else, I've learned to tune them out. Yet, they do work. Even when your mind is on other things, a catch word directed at something in your psyche or personal interests will grab your attention like a magnet, just like all those people looking for an urban assault vehicle to go to the grocery store or drive the kids around without being run over by an eighteen wheeler probably notice and pay attention to all the Hummer and SUV ads.

Anyway, the Starbucks ad really got to me when they said "success is not an entitlement." To me, this seems to mean that entitlements are a type of welfare, a dole, or handout that some people might expect. And, of course, success is something you've got to earn the way Starbucks has.

South Florida's Cuban population must be laughing their butts off over the prices Starbucks charges for the same caffeine blast they sell by the thimble-full on almost any street corner of Miami's Little Havana or the "café con leche" you can get in any good Latino restaurant.

Why would Starbucks, or more properly their expensive ad agency, even think of using the word "entitlement" in this sense unless the current climate in this country was bringing the word back into common usage? I'm sure politicians would like to see the word disappear, but where did the connotations of sucking off the great white underbelly of government and the taxpaying public come from?

I know there are people who believe that things like Social Security and Medicare are socialism or some communist plot like the CIO, but these are usually the same nitwits who think Social Security is a Ponzi scheme without understanding anything about Charles Ponzi or what he's famous for doing in the Roaring Twenties.

Entitlements are something you've paid for and are "entitled" to receive. Granted, you were often forced to pay for these things, but that in no way takes anything away from the fact that you deserve to receive the goods and services that you've paid for.

If I plunk my hard earned cash down on the counter for something I can't just pick off the shelves and a clerk has to go into the storeroom to get it, then by God he better get it or there's going to be trouble.

The problem we've got is that the clerks are eating part of the product before they get back to the counter.

We don't have much choice when the government, through our employers, takes money out of our paycheck for Social Security and Medicare, or the way our employers are forced to put up matching funds when they would just as soon give that money to us. Nor do we have much choice at the gas pumps, when we buy airline tickets, or dozens of other entitlements we're taxed for.

But we sure as hell have a choice when we don't get the goods and services we've already paid for, particularly when the government we gave that money to steals it, spends it on other things without asking, and then double bills us with interest added. Tells us that we didn't plunk the money or credit card down in the first place and now wants us to pay again, a second time, with a fine in the form of interest tacked on.

That's where I'm upset. That's what really honks me off. Just thinking about the government's trust fund scam, the storeroom with nothing in it, is enough to get me going.

I'm thinking of boycotting Starbucks forever, and I'm also thinking of boycotting the elections for the first time in my life. I don't need to endorse criminal behavior.