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!