Mr. Know-It-All

                              

I am starting a brand-new feature for 2018, an occasional question-and-answer column to provide needed answers to pressing questions. Now, since it is just beginning, I  had to find some really good questions, and there was no time pressure on me to come up with the answers.

How did I do it? I listened to people while waiting on line at my local big box store and the little deli a couple of blocks away. I grabbed a question or two from a talk radio station - I won’t say which one - that was asked just before the host called the caller an “idiot” and hung up on her.

And, of course, I made some of them up.

Let us begin. You can provide a fanfare yourself.

Dear Mr. Know-It-All:

My boss sent out a memo saying that, because of the new tax laws, we would all be getting a pay raise. Anyone with stock in the company would be getting a 30% increase in their purchase options.

But while our boss will make about $12,000 on the deal this year. I don’t have any stock options. Neither do the other people I work with every day. The boss says that while he would love to give us some money, it would violate our contract and he could be sued. 

The contract runs for another three years, and my boss says the company will be really generous next time we negotiate because the nation’s economy will be so much better.

My question is, what do I do when they ask me to work overtime now. I am afraid I will lose my second job if I don’t show up.

Dear Overworked:

I feel your problem. I really do. My answer depends on how much overtime you work, how much you make, and whether you can afford to say no and risk losing your job, which I assume is your main source of income.

If you don’t need the overtime pay, have solid job security and don’t want to work overtime, you should tell your boss you will be more than happy to work all the overtime he assigns, anytime after a new contract is signed three years from now.

Meanwhile, I suggest you start looking around for another job that might actually pay a little more than you now make, or pay a little less but give you a big bonus of self-respect.

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Dear Mr. Know-It-All:

I have an uncle who takes Amtrak several times a year, and I am worried because of the recent accident in Washington state, as well as accidents in New Jersey and other places.

Now I know Congress is investigating the cause of the accident, and why there was no smart technology in place to control the speed of that train going around a curve. I know it exists. Congress demanded that it be put in place years ago.

Do you think they will get to the bottom of this tragedy? Will anyone get arrested and punished for those poor people who were killed?

Dear Worrier:

You are right in everything you say. Congress is on the job. The technology is available and could have been installed. Congress did demand the job be done.

The sticking point - at least according to my sources - is that while Congress voted to make Amtrak safer, its members never got around to voting for the money to do the job. And, as far as I know, no contractor would agree to do the work with only the promise that they would get paid when the economy gets a little better.

You will know when the Congressional investigation is getting close to the truth when the appropriate committees buy some mirrors.

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Dear Mr. Know-It-All:

I know that my Republican party has done some bad things in the past few years, and that in the year since Donald Trump has gotten into office, things in Washington are becoming a little, well, tacky.

But, he is saying some things that need to be said and that I agree with. More to the point, I am making money on my investments, and if the tax burden gets too big, I will just move to some state where they don’t have high taxes or big expensive cities. The fly-over country covers a lot more space than the east and west coasts do, and I am sure I can find a happy home someplace where the buffalo used to roam.

Do you see any flaw in my logic?

Dear Flawless:

Let me answer this question in reverse order. I’ll save the biggest problem for last.

First (or last, as the case may be) you may find yourself alone on a great plain someday, in desperate need of a good doctor. Or accountant. Or lawyer. The really good ones - trust me on this - really don’t have a lot of time to waste, and their practices are pretty well filled up.

You could always go to a clinic 80 or 90 miles away if there is no snowstorm or forest fire, and you could always hang around the county courthouse and hope some lawyer trips at your feet. Good luck with that.

Next (it works either forward or backward), our President is calling out a lot of people - the poor, minorities, Democrats), but any good showman knows that you have to vary the act. In a couple of years, all his old favorites may be gone, and he will need new ones to pick on. How is your ethnic heritage, background and experience? And how many times have you played golf at a Trump course? These things will count.

Now, finally, we have the problem with your money. It’s a good problem, of course. Having money always is.

People make money on bad things all the time. Otherwise no one could buy alcohol or crack, or rent prostitutes. We erase the moral distinction between people who own stock in an electric utility that uses coal plants or a food company that pushes corn syrup and sugar, and the people who own stock in a bank that sells mortgages to people who will never repay it and then forecloses on the house and sells it again.

You are not bad because you own stock in an arms manufacturer, you are - maybe - just no worse than someone who speeds through a red light or takes 12 items to the line that says “10 or less.” We live in a flexible moral world.

But the point is that, while you are making money now, you are probably making it because the people under you on the economic ladder are losing money. And the national debt is getting bigger every year (It’s how the tax code works).

If we keep shoveling money up the economic ladder, pretty soon you will find out that the line that divides you from the poor people on the lower rungs has quietly slipped from beneath your feet and is now above your head.

And you won’t be able to use bonds to cover the debt any more and pass it on to your kids,  because there are just too many people under 35 in the voting pool and they now outvote you. Just don’t depend on the kindness of strangers, especially the ones you meet in the health clinic 100 miles from your house.

Address your questions to Mr. Know-It-All at Where’s Walter C? at blogspot.com. Who knows what answers we will find together.

Hey, I'm Not Average

To set the record straight, I am no fan of the GOP’s proposed tax bill. But, while I am happy to say “shame on them,” I also have to say “shame on the media” for doing a terrible job in reporting on it.

Now, there are degrees of shame, from Fox News near-total lying about the tax bill to MSNBC’s dancing around the edges and trying to report what the bill - which still doesn’t exist as I write this, despite all the coverage - would likely contain.

Now, the members of Congress get more blame than the media, because they know more about it than the media does. After all, reporters just talk to their congressional sources to get their information. And those sources often just parrot their party line.

No, my beef with the coverage is that, no matter who is doing the story, the reporters seem to talk only about what this bill could do to the average American. And, I am not average. Nor are you.

Presumably, there are some people in the United States who have our nation’s exact average income and pay our exact average tax bill, have precisely our national average medical expenses and contribute the absolutely average amount to the charity of their choice. Good luck finding them.

I live in New York State. I live in suburban Long Island, where we have county taxes and town taxes and school taxes and library taxes, and special lines on our tax bill to pay for police and farmland preservation and a batch of other things. Some people live in villages, which have their own taxes as well.

Now I haven’t filed a short form tax since my wife and I had our first child. In fact, we didn’t file a short form even before that, because we had lots of deductions. Now people who are single, or who don’t make as much as I do, will save some money under the new tax bill. I will lose, big time. A couple of years ago, our medical expenses were really high - well north of $20,000 - and if that happened to us again, none of the expense would be deductible. 

I also live in a state with several big cities, cities which get a lot of state aid to pay for public transportation, and sewers and road repairs and a lot of other things you don’t have in rural areas. It’s not that our state lawmakers are spendthrifts (which they are) or that they waste a lot of money (which they do) or that they all find ways to pay for parks and choral groups or parades in their districts (yep, that too). It’s that you can’t move a half million people into a city to go to work each day and back again each night without having a pretty expensive transit system.

And, if we actually charged people what it costs to ride the train or the bus, we would choke in our own congestion overnight. Just imagine how many people making $30,000 a year could suddenly afford to pay $10 or $15 a day for their trip to work and back.

So, a lot of them would find a better place to live and work. Then, when lunchtime comes, you would have thousands of bankers and lawyers lining up at the local deli. A lot of the delivery people would be gone. 

Want to get up at 4 a.m. to be at work at 9 a.m., then get home at 10 p.m. because twice or three times the number of cars are trying to get over a bridge? Enough of those kinds of problems and our cities will start dying. Soon after that, the people from our vast rural areas who don’t want to pay higher taxes to support those free-spending city people will see their rural economy start dying as well.

Why? Well, instead of filling a freight car or two with hot dogs for the supermarkets, you would have to fill 10,000 or 20,000 trucks to get the same hot dogs to all those new spread-out customers. Same thing with peanut butter, local bank offices and movie theaters.

Ever wonder why the Post Office is always running out of money? It’s because Congress won’t let it shut down all those underused rural post offices. But, that’s another story.

But I digress. Here’s the point. The impact of the tax cut on me is not the same as it is for people living in Utah or Alaska. Just as the impact on someone with five million dollars in the bank (or in stock or bonds or strange financial investments involving Ireland or China) is different than on someone who just works and makes a lot of overtime. 

And, yet, all I keep hearing from the media is the impact of the tax bill on the average family or the average worker. As if there was such a thing.

Here’s an idea. Let Sean Hannity (who reportedly made $29 million in 2015) or Rachel  Maddow (who reportedly made $6 million in 2015) explain how the tax bill would affect them, and then compare it with the tax impact on a typical worker. The math would be easy - if one worker makes $50,000 a year, 20 workers bring in $1 million. We could easily calculate how much 120 of those workers pay in taxes and compare it to Rachel’s tax bill, or 580 of those workers pay in taxes and compare it to Sean’s tax bill. Both of them are smart enough to take advantage of the new bill’s tax provisions, whatever they may be.

It still wouldn’t tell us how the deductibility of state taxes or medical benefits would hit each of those workers, or how their local church or hospital would react to the loss of no-longer-deductible donations, but it would give us all some kind of numbers to look at.

Just don’t call them an average.

A Strange Dream

(If Pete Seeger were still writing music, he might have done something like this)

Last night I had the strangest dream

I ever dreamed before.

I dreamed that Trump, our President,

Just couldn’t find a war.

Oh, first he pardoned Hillary,

Although she did no crime.

And then he said Joe Biden was

A hero for our times.

On John McCain he wavered most

First yes, then no, and then

A final yes, and said he hoped

they could be friends again.

He smiled and waved at dreamers,

Called Chuck and Nancy proud

And finally said he hoped his talk

Had not enraged the crowd.

Now wondrous as all this was

For you and me to see

It caused some consternation

Within the GOP.

“We have to hate, so we can thrive,”

The cry came from the House.

Oh, President, our Chosen One,

Can’t you find just one louse?

He searched and scanned,

both near and far, and would be searching yet.

But then he saw the enemy

who voted for our debt.

“Your tax reforms just made things worse,”

Said Trump, and with a nod

He flew away, while saying loud:

"I knew it wasn’t hard.”

May Old Acquaintance Be Forgot.....

It always seems that the last few things go faster. The last potato chips in a bowl, the last tickets to a popular concert and - for all of us - the last few days on the calendar. So, before I rip off the December page and put up a brand new January, let me say good-bye to a few things that deserve to go away.

I’m too smart to expect they will go away. of course. I know they will hang around like the ghost of Christmas past, who vanishes each year after visiting Scrooge, only to come back again next December 24.

But, they should go. Forever. So, in no particular order, here are the things that I hope will be consigned to the dust bin of history, or the nearest toxic waste site. Certainly not to a recycling bin.

1 - The Republican double-barreled argument that we have to cut corporate tax rates and that their tax bill is really designed to help the middle class.

If you want to cut corporate tax rates because ours are, they say, among the highest in the world, then do it. But, at the same time, eliminate all those special tax exemptions that let scores of really big businesses pay no tax at all. That would simplify the tax code by getting rid of half the pages.

You say it’s too complicated to do? Well, I agree. Cut the tax rate to 22 percent if you want, and leave all those exemptions. But, add a small provision. Every company, no matter what else the tax code says, must pay an alternate minimum tax of 15 per-cent.

If you just defer income, or just stash it off-shore, you will have to pay 10 per-cent a year in interest on that money, every year it is deferred. After three years, the government gets to take legal action to recover that deferred cash, or any other asset your business may hold.

2 - The tax cuts are for the middle class. Well, I know the tax code is really complicated - I just said that - so here’s how I would do it. Leave our tax code alone, and just send a rebate back to everyone. You pay your taxes, and the feds say they are taking in too much money, so give every man, woman and child a check for $500 or $1,000.  That way, everyone gets the same tax break. It may look like big families get a bonus, but just try raising a kid on $1,000 a year. Good luck with that.

3 - It’s all Hillary’s fault. Well, this is a gift to the Republicans. Our president just has to stop blaming the Clintons for every problem in the country (people may start noticing that there was a Bush or two in office while some of those problems were getting bigger). What’s the gift? The Democratic party will have to recognize that Hillary was their own creation, and take the responsibility for all the things that went wrong in her campaign.

4 - Korea. We threaten. They threaten. We threaten louder. They threaten louder. They started it. We started it. Here’s my advice. You want to get serious and get tough? Just ask Congress to reinstate the draft. No deferrals, please. You want to show the whole country is willing to share in the sacrifice, bone spurs or not.

4A - Just how serious would a war be? Since we have no memory of that 1950 conflict, here are some facts.

• The war started when 75,000 North Korean troops surged across the border to bring Communism to South Korea by force.

* In the three years that police action lasted (no war was ever declared) the U.S. dropped more bombs and napalm that we used in the entire Pacific theater in World War II.

*There were more than 52,000 American casualties during that police action. Numerous estimates were that more than five million people (mostly civilians) died as well.

• Our South Korean allies provided prostitutes to the men in its army. There is no official record of whether that benefit was extended to our soldiers.

• About five million men and women served in the armed forces during the Korean police action, although most of them were not directly involved in the fighting, or even in the country. We currently have about 1.5 million men and women on active duty, and another half million or so in reserve forces. 

5 - We are the party of fiscal responsibility. Just stop passing tax cuts that expire in 10 years just so you can make the bills fit under the laws that were passed to limit our ever-mounting debt. That’s what Republicans call tax gimmicks when they are not in office.

6 - We shouldn’t have to pay our taxes for those free-spending liberal states. There are actually lots of different ways to figure out how much a state pays in federal taxes and how much money they get back, but on a per-capita basis (and we each pay only our own income tax) New Jersey gets only about 50 cents back from the federal government for each dollar their residents pay in taxes, and Delaware gets back only about 30 cents. Illinois, Minnesota and Kansas residents also get back about 50 cents for each dollar they pay.

On the other side, New Mexico residents get back more than $2 for every dollar they pay in federal taxes. So do residents of Mississippi, Kentucky and Alabama. Montana residents only get back $1.25 or so for every dollar they pay in federal taxes.

Since they all want tax fairness. maybe everyone who pays taxes in Mississippi or Alabama could look at what they pay, then make out a check for the very same amount and send it to New Jersey or Delaware, or even New York. After all, fair is fair.

Happy New Year!

Some New Year's Resolutions For Our Binary World

With mistletoe definitely out at office Christmas parties this year (especially the media group grogfests) and the war on Christmas officially won by Mike Pence, it’s time to salvage at least one end-of-the-year holiday tradition. The New Year’s Predictions.

I’m going to give you a couple. Or maybe not. After all, there is a new sheriff in town, a new world view that sees things - all things - in simple black and white. Or not.

See how simple it is. A lot of people already live in this binary world, and more seem to be getting into it every day. Things are yes or no, on or off, good or bad. Republicans or Democrats. Conservatives or Liberals. And, never shall they ever meet.

Naturally, I disagree. By career choice and personal attitude, I tend to avoid simplistic distinctions. I see life as being more complex and subtle, interrelated and ever-changing. Which, I admit, is great for poetry and art, but lousy for running a bill through Congress or blocking the appointment of a Supreme Court justice until your own guy in the White House gets in and nominates someone else.

Now my friends and family will say that I just naturally like to argue. I say they are wrong. (See how easy it is to fall into the binary trap). But, for the sake of argument (I know. It proves their point, barely) let’s say they are right. That gives us just two choices on most things. But, it doesn’t make predictions easy.

Still, December 31 is rapidly approaching, so I will bravely wade deep into the binary world that controls our political system and offer by binary predictions. Here we go.

First, Trump will either be impeached and forced out of office in disgrace or he won’t. Now, I predict that no matter what happens, life will get a lot worse before it gets better. Let me show you.

If he is impeached, two things can happen. Normalcy will return to our government or it won’t. Mike Pence will be truly independent of the most radical of the GOP donors and the most fundamentalist in the GOP Christian conservative wing or he won’t. I think he will make government in Washington even worse, and the Republicans will spend a good part of next year selling whole chunks of the interstate highway system to private investors, leasing out big hunks of our national park system, and taking a really sharp knife to Social Security to balance out the revenue losses caused by their indecent tax cuts for the rich.

One other thing (those darn binary choices again) is that he won’t be impeached, That scenario is a lot darker. A war somewhere. A total betrayal of Israel because he wants to build hotels in Arab countries. (The talk about moving our embassy to Jerusalem is just another shiny bauble, and doesn’t really mean much to anyone under 35).

Then the Republicans controlling our government will pack the federal courts with so many hard-line judges that we will never get  normalcy back. After all, to them the Constitution is not so much a living document as it is something set in stone. The Constitution never said anything about the internet, so the federal government can’t pass any net neutrality laws.

And, of course, great chunks of America will be going broke.

I call that one trickle down pain. Remember the local Republicans who got elected to town and county and state offices? Well, how will they respond to the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars in federal aid? Raise local taxes that are no longer deductible?

I don’t think so. But, in our binary world, they might just surprise us. They could raise taxes on...well, just who do you think will see their taxes go up?

I see Pennsylvania getting a block grant to maintain its interstate highway system, a big road net that takes almost a whole day to drive from the New Jersey border to Pittsburgh. An unimaginable amount of freight from the west and the midwest goes along that road each day, heading for New England and down to Georgia and Florida.

Now if the block grant doesn’t cover the cost of maintaining the road, plowing snow and making needed improvements, how much do you think Pennsylvania will raise its own taxes to fill that financial hole? No, the tolls will go up. A silent nickel or dime on every parcel going from New York to Ohio or Colorado to Atlanta. Or a silent 50 cents or a dollar on every UPS package headed across the country. Guess who pays.

What else will happen if Trump stays in office? (The binary route is a sticky one to travel.) The counter-puncher will have no one to attack. Certainly, he can’t spend four long years in office attacking Hillary Clinton. His ratings will go down. And his attacks on the minority Democrats in Congress aren’t going too well. Maybe he could just wait until some U.S. possession is hit by a hurricane, or some state is devastated by floods or fires and then blame local officials for ingratitude.

No, I think his first target will have to be the  Republican Party, and then the nation’s businesses for not creating new jobs and raising worker’s salaries. Shame on them. He may even put out an angry tweet, which the compensation committee that is reviewing the CEO’s next compensation package will dutifully take into account.

Now, here’s my final prediction. And, it’s where the choices stop being binary. Things aren’t going to work as promised by the President and the Republican leadership. The tax code we still haven’t read - it’s not yet adopted, you realize - is going to build up the deficit and is not going to put money in the pockets of the working poor or the middle class or the folks on Social Security.

(And if it doesn’t pass, there are still ways to tweak things through regulations and administrative changes that will do the GOP donors bidding).

The economy will start tanking before most of us notice. Businesses aren’t going out and hiring people because (a) jobs are being automated at an ever-increasing pace and (b) a lot of companies just do not see a sharp increase in the demand for their products over the next year or two. And (c) we are pretty close to full employment in a lot of fields, and there are no new workers with the skills to step in and fill those new jobs except for the undocumented folks already living here.

So, our new president will rant and rave and look for people to blame for our nation’s new problems.And we voters will say it is a shame, and that this wasn’t what we wanted when we gave the nation over to the worst of the Republican party, and that there is nothing we can do about it.

That attitude will probably last until it really is too late to turn things around - at least turn a lot of things around - for a long time. If we just keep denying things for long enough, our anger will not be unleashed for a year or two.

Maybe not until after next year’s vote for Congress.

I predict it will. Or it won’t. That’s called the binary out.

The Real Problem With Puerto Rico

We might as well just face it.  The United States of America is a lousy Colonial power. 

We just don’t know how to do it right. Heck, we don’t really know how to do it at all.

Wait, you say. We are not a colonial power at all. Never were. We rebelled against the King of England and became a free nation, denouncing colonial control and becoming the world’s first real democracy. Just read the history books.

Well, not quite. I’ll give you a little quiz to show you what I mean. What do the following places have in common - Guam, American Samoa, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Wake Island, Midway Atoll. And, for good measure, add Washington, D.C.

You guessed it. They are all colonies of the United States, although we use nicer words to describe them. Territories is the most common one. Footnotes might be more accurate. Here’s why.

Anyone living in Puerto Rico is a United States citizen. So is anyone living in Washington, D.C. And, if they lived somewhere else, they would have the right - as all citizens do - to elect their own national government and their elected representatives would decide on their own budgets and taxes.

But Puerto Ricans can only vote for President if they move to another state. And they do have an elected observer in Congress who can sit on committees, but can not vote. Pretty much the same thing for the folks in Washington. Funny that both places have enormous financial problems, and that it is our Congress which really has the biggest role in setting their budgets.

And, hey, do you know who the top official is in Puerto Rico? Not the governor, actually. The person with the most power is the President of the United States. Not that the President actually uses that power much. Too much work, very few details, poor options all around and - in the end - not a single vote in the next federal election.

So, when our President and Congress get around to doing things, the problems of Virginia and Utah and Oklahoma and New Jersey and all the other states seem to come first, and the colonies end up at the back of the line. Works that way for Republicans and Democrats alike. Like I said, footnotes.

There are 16 possessions outside the United States under our nation’s control - the simple word colony will save a lot of space - although it paints a false picture, since seven of them are uninhabited and five are just two square miles or less in size. Ah, but those tiny specks of land give us control of vast stretches of ocean for fishing and other things. We even turned the uninhabited MIdway Atoll into a National Wildlife Refuge.

Now, we got these colonial possessions in different ways. We got American Samoa under the Treaty of Berlin in  1899.  Captain William Reynolds sailed into Midway on the USS Lackawanna and took possession in 1867. The Treaty of Paris gave the United States Guam, the Philippines and Puerto Rico on 1899, after we won the Spanish-American war. We got the U.S. Virgin Islands the more honorable way, we bought them from Denmark in 1917.

Traditionally, great nations acquire colonies because those far away places have something that the nation wants...things like coal and rubber and diamonds and cheap labor come to mind. Or, they may simply be geographically important, or - in a few cases - they are a convenient place to dump things those nations don’t want. The penal colony on Devil’s Island is a fine example of that.

Now, sooner or later, colonies will rise up and create problems for the nations that own them. After all, who wants to live in a colony where your work hard, see a lot of your money going overseas to an absentee owner, pay more than anyone else for a lot of your basic necessities, pay for soldiers who are there to “protect” you from other would-be owners of your colony, and have someone else make all the important rules governing your community.

When those problems get big enough, there is revolution. There is anger. It becomes more expensive for the owning nation to keep the colony than to set it free, and so the colony is set free. The people can govern themselves

Well, we fought that kind of tyranny during the American revolution.  We won, after great sacrifice of lives and treasure.  It was the beginning of a noble experiment. Which brings us, inevitably, to Puerto Rico - our biggest colony.

By now, you might be pretty mad. Puerto Rico - at least for people whose closest experience to that island is staying at a Hilton on vacation a couple of times or just watching West Side Story - has a pretty bad image. The people are lazy, the country is bankrupt, and there is little gratitude for the prompt response we made after the hurricane hit and all the billions of dollars we have spent in aid.

It’s the same kind of attitude that the English had, the French had, the Germans had, the Dutch had. And, probably, every colonial power going back to the Egyptians and the Romans and the Greeks. But, that’s ancient history. Let’s look at today.

Today, Puerto Rico is bankrupt. Which is to be expected. Things haven’t been good there since all the industry left.

What industry, you ask. Well, all those factories which were built after our Congress gave them a gift - a decade or so of not having to pay taxes on any money they earned in Puerto Rico. Of course, someone had to provide the infrastructure - the roads and the water and the electric power - but those things came courtesy of the local government which created several government monopolies to run them, got unlimited power to sell bonds to build infrastructure, and then had to figure out how to pay those bonds off. Guess how? More government bonds.

Well, things worked out reasonably well until the rug was pulled out. The wonderful tax exemption went away, other countries with cheaper labor offered their own incentives, and the businesses left. So, there was poor Puerto Rico, with nothing but empty factories and mountains of debt.

Which they might have started to pay off if they had an income tax. A really big one, like a thousand percent. Wait, you can’t have a tax that big. And, if everything you buy - from cars to milk to toilet paper - costs more than it does on the mainland United States because you are paying extra import taxes and transportation costs just to get the stuff across what our President calls a “big ocean,” then you sink deeper and deeper into debt. And you quibble with each other over who should be solving things, and you don’t maintain the roads and the electric grid. Just like us, in the mainland United States, with all our aging bridges and electric grids. inadequately maintained.

And, then, the hurricane hits. Just like here.

Well, as I said, our poor non-voting colony isn’t at the top of the list to get help. We just don’t know how much money there will be until we get this tax cut thing figured out. But, here’s one thing we do know -  half the people on Puerto Rico will never know I wrote this. 

They have been without electric power for two months, and electricity isn’t expected to be fully restored until around Christmas. Imagine the outcry if half of Queens or half of Kansas City were to be without power for four months.

Well, Congress has approved $3.5 billion in emergency aid to Puerto Rico, and the island nation is asking for 94 billion more.

We’ll worry about that later. Sometime after the newest sex scandal is thoroughly examined. After all, isn’t that the job - and now the economic necessity - of today’s journalism? Give the audience what it wants. Otherwise, they will just change the channel.

An Unexpected Joy, or I Discover Lazy!

Another week, another delay in my blogging. Hooray!

I say this, happily, because I can. It is one of the great joys of retirement - you can actually not write something, miss your self-imposed deadline, and nothing bad will happen to you. Hooray, again.

So, why am I late? To put it on record, I wanted to blog about the problems of Puerto Rico. That’s because those problems are big, cruel and are being made a lot worse by a failed response from Congress and the President. So, I started to write, explaining my views and my reasons, and I realized I wasn’t doing a very good job. So, I re-wrote, and re-wrote again. Still doing it. The blog keeps changing under my fingers, so to speak. And, other things keep getting in the way. Other subjects to blog about, family events of great importance, and the upcoming FATDOG convention.

To put the most important things first, my son and his wife are having a baby. Due date is around Thanksgiving. Lot of baby-sitting in involved here, which is another great joy and another source of exhaustion.

And we are making Thanksgiving Dinner for an extended family, so there is a lot of shopping and a lot of prep. My wife, Renie, belongs to a choral group - actually two of them - and she has a lot of back-and-forth trips to rehearsals. And shopping for the holidays. And wrapping packages for the holidays.

You can see how the blog keeps getting pushed back.

Then there are the ongoing sex scandals in Washington, the horrid lurching of the proposed Republican tax cut plan, and the ever-growing question of just how long large chunks of the country can keep denying reality when all they watch is Fox news.

And, even that is changing. I was going to a game the other night and listening to one of the loudest conservative radio talk show hosts - yes, I do listen to them once in a while - and he was as critical and nasty as ever. and went into a long discussion of our Constitution and the goals of our founding fathers in denouncing the centralization of power in the United States.

Only difference was that instead of saying “Democrats” when he was condemning the power grab, he said “Republicans.”  Same attack, different party. A possible sign the erosion has begun.

Now, a few words about the Republican tax cut plan. Lots of smart people have said a lot of words, certainly better than me, about how it would hollow out the middle class, certainly anyone who lives in a big city or a heavily populated state.

I said a while back that a lot of voters just turn off listening to people who complain about changes being made by the Republicans in Congress until it actually effects them. The tax plan is terrible becomes “blah, blah, blah” to them until they have to fill out their taxes.

So, here’s a simple example of why I think it’s so horrible. Let’s pretend, for just a  moment, that it becomes law, and all us people living in blue, high -tax states like New York or California can no longer deduct taxes.

Well, first thing to happen is that the state legislatures will probably cut back sharply on state aid to public schools. Let the local school boards raise their taxes.

Then the really expensive work of maintaining our roads and bridges, tunnels and mass transit lines, will be put off for a while. And fares will go up. It gets really expensive to have five or six or seven million people trying to live and work in a small area. Maybe the commuter lines will just run two or three rush-hour trains a day, and the commute to work will go up to two or three hours a day. Each way.

Airports reducing the number of flights. Businesses closing. Give it a couple of years, and there could be a real dispersal of the work force. Let Montana and Kansas see how much fun it will be when the population doubles or triples and they have to put in new water lines and sewer lines and new roads and power plants. They could take a field trip to Florida and just take a good look.

But, before that, the people who live in the flyover center of our nation will start to notice things. They will notice that the things they make and sell to the millions of people on the east and west coasts aren’t being ordered any more.

All those cattle which are sent to the slaughter houses and then to all the supermarkets and stores on Long Island and New Jersey and Los Angeles won’t have to be sent there any more, because people are cutting back. The family with $8,000 in medical expenses they can’t deduct, or the people who have to pay another $4,000 in school taxes will no longer be eating as much hamburger.

That, I think, they will notice. Long before they find out that their kids aren’t being admitted to all those colleges in New England or California because out-of-state tuition for them has doubled or tripled.

But, maybe, one of the college professors who has a little more free time will write a really good book, and the students in Kansas and Nebraska will read it and learn something. Call it trickle-down education.

Well, back to the holidays and the baby and the Friday After Thanksgiving Day of Gaming. And, in a week or two, Puerto Rico. I promise!

The Amazing Lindsey

This is all about the amazing Lindsey Pratt. She is really something, although - until I did a little research - I had no idea just what that something was.

I first met her a couple of weeks ago. She came to my house for just a minute, but she really impressed me with her common sense, her love of family, her middle class roots and her knowledge of the tax code.

Well, she wasn’t really in my house. She was on television. In a commercial.

There she was, with a man who was obviously her husband - he didn’t really say much - just pushing a child on her backyard swing. Or, maybe it was her neighbor’s swing or her daughter’s swing. It doesn’t matter.

She was dressed in a way that said “solid middle class.” Her accent was neutral, couldn’t tell if she was a city mouse or a country mouse. Didn’t look rich. Didn’t look poor. Just one of us.

Except for just one thing. She had read the tax code and the changes that Congress is planning to make in the tax code.

Well, that was amazing enough, because - when the commercials started - almost no one in Congress had even seen the tax code changes. Certainly none of the Democrats, and certainly not most of the Republicans. No committee hearings on the changes. No testimony by experts. No nothing.

But, there she was. “I read it,” she told me. And, she said an independent study - it was a short commercial, so she didn’t have time to name it - said that it would save the average family (people like her and me, I guess) more than $1,200 a year. Good deal.

Then she told me that my Congressman, Lee Zeldin, was a big supporter of the tax cut plan and that I had to support him in the upcoming election. Well, that’s fair. After all, he is putting more than $1,200 a year into my pocket. And his fellow Republicans say this will create more jobs and improve the economy. Good deal all around.

At the very end, there was some white lettering at the bottom of the last frame of her commercial. It told me that the ad was paid for by the American Action Network. How patriotic is that!

Like I said, amazing.

                                                       But, It Is All A Lie

I don’t know where to begin counting the lies in this little commercial. I don’t know where to start exploring the enormity of its deceptions. Or its hyperbole.

But, we could start with the obvious. There is no Republican tax plan yet. It is still being written. My independent analysis says that it will cost me somewhere between $5,000 and $10,000 a year - that’s because all my state taxes, school taxes, medical expenses and other deductions like interest on student loans will no longer be deductible - and will create real, unspoken hardships down the road when the state and the town and the schools and all the other places that now tax me lose their federal aid and have to charge me even more. Heck, even if I did get Lindsey’s $1,200, it would go away in a heartbeat when my town or my school district sees its state aid cut because the money is no longer coming to the state from the federal government.

Oh, yes, federal aid really does come down to the state. Ever notice those signs along the big roads being repaired or widened that tells you who is really paying for the work?

And, another thing. The Amazing Lindsey didn’t just come into my living room. She’s gone into a lot of living rooms. Tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions? Who knows. How many living rooms are there in more than 30 Congressional districts across the nation that are being targeted?

There was Lee Zeldin in New York, of course. Also Martha McSally in Arizona, Mike Coffman in Colorado, Brian Mast in Florida, Mark Meadows in North Carolina, Rodney Frelinghuysen in New Jersey, Jim Jordan in Ohio...33 in all. It is costing the American Action Network $2 million for its targeted media blitz furthering the tax reform movement.

How do I know? It’s posted on the American Action Network website.

                                      So, Just Who is Lindsey?

Now all of this made me wonder just who Lindsey Pratt is. Maybe an actress, or maybe a model. Maybe some kind of authority on tax reform. So, I tried to look her up. And, I failed.

Now there are lots of people named Lindsey Pratt listed when you Google the name. Too many to look at. But none of the first hundred or so seemed to match the person in the ad. So, I tried looking at images. It was a real experience.

There are hundreds of pictures of Lindsey Pratt. The college student. The businessman. The kid on the basketball team. One rather risque image of an attractive young woman. Young, elderly, old, young, black, white. But none of them seemed to match the Lindsey Pratt who has been coming into my living room, making the outrageous claim that she has read a tax bill that hasn’t been written yet.

And who, you ask, is behind the American Action Network? Good luck finding out.

The American Action Network is a private, not-for-profit 501(c)4, which means it does not have to file a lot of public disclosure documents. It was created in 2010, after the Supreme Court ruled in the Citizens United case that private organizations can spend unlimited money on political campaigning. And, amazingly, the new group managed to spend $26 million that year on federal elections, money that - if individual donors had spent it - would have to be reported. Now the Koch brothers were among the early founders, which could have helped with the funds. Or, maybe, it managed to save some rent money by sharing office space with Karl Rove’s American Crossroads PAC.

Oh, yes, one other thing. Lee Zeldin says that he can not vote for the Republican tax bill in its current form. Seems like too many of the people who live in his district will be losing a lot of money when they can no longer deduct their state taxes or school taxes or medical expenses. Little things like that.

The Prime Directive

The last time I was so slow in writing a blog, it was because I decided to do something really unusual in the on-line world. I took some time to think, a lot of time in fact. It took me about two weeks to decide what I wanted to say and how I wanted to say it.

It was kind of like the way a magazine article compares to a newspaper article, or the way a newspaper article - which can take days or weeks to write - compares to the breathless rush and dramatic video of broadcast journalism.

This time it was something different. Really different. I have been so distracted by the exciting rush of news - national, international, domestic, hollywood - that I simply stopped thinking. All I did was watch and listen and watch some more, as a literal flood of news poured over me.

And I started thinking really deep thoughts. Should football players have the right to express themselves on the sidelines before a game? Should the football team owners have the right to usurp patriotism as part of their own game, and decide which actions are patriotic and which are not.

Should they close the food stands while the national anthem is playing? Should ushers eject people who talk to each other and not stand at attention when the national anthem is playing?

What about a baseball game where an America team is playing the Toronto Blue Jays? Do the players have to stand at attention for both national anthems? What if the game is being played in Canada?

Or, just what is sexual harassment anyway. I know that lots of people say it is a man problem, and that any act or word could be considered sexual harassment. And I know the law clearly defines a lot of acts as harassment, and does not deal with a lot of other acts. And the overt behavior of Harvey Weinstein is clearly outrageous and should be punished.

But what about all those movies made in the 1940’s and 1950’s where the relationship between men and women was clearly one of complete harassment by today’s standards? Was Rock Hudson sexually harassing Elizabeth Taylor all through “Giant,” intimidating her and making all the decisions for the family? Will I ever look at “Gone With The WInd” the same way again?

Well, you can see where all these bright and shining objects took me. To the endless details of a proposed and yet unwritten tax cut to the darkly hidden role of United States troops in African countries - a role not even known by the Congressional committees that regulate these things.

Should our soldiers die without the elected representatives of the people knowing what was going on? Remember, Mr. Phelps, if your team is discovered, the secretary will deny all knowledge of your assignment.

And then, it just hit me. Not that I had been suckered in by all this action - why should I be different than the rest of the country - but I figured out the big secret behind what had been going wrong. For me and virtually everyone I know.

It gives me a chance to carp, once again, at the failure of the media. The media, collectively, is forgetting the prime directive of journalism. Let me say it in a separate paragraph, because it is really important.

The news should be new. Not a rerun.

Want an example? Well, the first time Donald Trump attacked Hillary Clinton in a tweet, it was an unprecedented action. Never been done before by a sitting president to an opponent. Dramatic and really newsworthy.

The second time he did it, not so much. Maybe the unusual continuation of his attack was new. Maybe not. But, not nearly as big a story. Then came the third time, and the fourth, and maybe the fifth or sixth, depending on how many of Trump’s denials you want to believe.

But, here we see our media treat each attack as if it were as important as the first. How about his first lie, or his first broken promise? How about his demands to build the wall, each of them as breathtakingly covered as the first. Look, video of the first samples of what the wall may look like. Wow, still news after all these years. Well, at least it seems like this has been going on for years.

Want to count the fifty or so times the Republicans voted to kill the Affordable Care Act? Wait, let me turn on the TV, they may be doing it again.

All of this does have a purpose, of course. It’s great red meat to put in the fund-raising letters. Heck, let’s spread a story that the Democrats and the Republicans are in cahoots, with each party using each outrage to raise funds for...well, not for another election, but to hire some politically-connected fundraisers who will use this outrage to raise money for...well, it may not be true, but it could be.

At least for one party. Depends on where you stand. Or not.

Journalism’s role in this should be to look at what is happening and put it all in proportion. What’s not happening in Washington is a bigger story than what our President and our Congress think of NFL players protesting on the sidelines.

The ever-expanding foreign ownership of our nation’s businesses - and the lack of any identity or national commitment by our multi-national industries - is a bigger story than any vague promise of better health care or a more fair tax code.

Want another example? How many big businesses in our nation don’t pay taxes on what they earn here by transferring the money they raise off-shore. Heck, their CEO’s probably stand up in their luxury box while the national anthem is being played as their profits escape, untaxed, to a new tax haven every Sunday.

Perhaps in a year or two, Trump’s latest attack on Hillary Clinton will no longer be front page news and will not be the lead story on cable.

By then, maybe the Russian owners of our nation’s media will just want to put the whole thing behind them as a bad investment.