Be Careful What You Wish For...

There’s an old saying - be careful what you wish for. It might come true.

It’s never been more appropriate than today.  Donald Trump, for example, wanted to be a powerful wartime president who made life and death decisions against a rapidly-spreading disease, and Republicans - for the most part - either encouraged him, praised him, or  just sat quietly on the sidelines.

Now he’s making decisions not to order manufacturers to make ventilators and thinking about having some areas of the nation go back to business.

Good luck with that. Only his loyal radio and tv supporters can see pictures of an empty Times Square or downtown Chicago or small towns anywhere in the nation with stores closed and think things are going well.

Well, I can see his thinking. The stock market is lower than when he got into office. Unemployment claims have shot through the roof. There are too many stories about overcrowded hospitals, and the miracle cures Mike Pence promised haven’t gotten here yet.

And just not testing to keep the numbers down doesn’t seem to be working.

So, at the risk of being seen as negative, let me point out that there is a real risk in opening up the economy in low-disease areas of our nation.

Why not get people back to work in places like North Dakota or Wyoming or Montana where incidents of Coronavirus are still so low?

Well, those are big open states, without big population centers where the virus can quickly spread. Some members of Congress would probably agree with him that it would be a good way to cut down our jobless rate.

Well, I can give you one good reason why it won’t work. You could probably give me five or six. All you have to do is go in your computer and do a search. Just ask what the top industries are in those wonderful, disease-free states.

Well, a lot of them list oil and gas production as one of their top industries. If we could only get our friends the Russians and the Saudis to stop pumping out oil and gas, then the prices would go up and we could get a better price for the oil we can sell. That would be good for the economy. 

Perhaps the President could write a perfect letter to those nation’s leaders and ask for a small favor. After all, they are his friends.

In a lot of those states, the second or third biggest industry is - hard to believe - government. Government regulators and government services are a big deal, especially when it comes to building roads and collecting taxes and running schools. Enough said.

Now, my favorite on the list of top industries in the states where he wants to rev up the economy is - wait for it - tourism. Yes, the best way to help our economy is to bring mobs of virus-infected people from New York and Chicago and other big cities to those wide open spaces, where they can fill local hotels and stay on local ranches. What could go wrong?

Maybe that’s why Florida is such a disease hot spot.

There is one other thing to think about as we contemplate the President’s wish list. One more common link in the economy of all those states where the disease count is (at least for this week) still low.

Agriculture. We need all that food, of course, but you can’t just double the output of farms and expect all of us to just double our purchases at the supermarket.

Well, lots of us did double the amount of toilet paper we bought at our favorite big box store, and now those hoarders can go to their closet or their basement or to whoever they keep three or four or six months worth of toilet paper and feel safe.

Well, just one less thing to worry about, I guess. Or a mocking monument to stupidity. After all, real Trump supporters would just cut their Washington Post into small strips. I heard on the web that its a good way to prevent disease, or at least to keep from knowing stuff.

But, I don’t wish for that. I certainly don’t wish for that.

I know how dangerous it is to wish for something. After all, you might end up getting what you wish for.

Just like the President.

The Cure Is Worse Than The Disease?

No one has ever died from watching Fox News. Let me be perfectly clear about that.

President Donald Trump has never gone out of his way to kill any of his supporters or even former supporters. Let me be perfectly clear about that too.

So, what should we think about the story of an Arizona man who died after taking the drug chloroquine phosphate after he heard from President Trump that it could help fight Coronavirus.

“Fake news!” You say? Well, it ran on a Fox affiliate.

The man and his wife, both in their 60’s, both took chloroquine phosphate when they heard it was found in an anti-malaria medication that might be useful in treating the virus. They were both in a hospital 30 minutes later, according to the story posted on line.

They didn’t have a prescription. It was an ingredient in a compound used to clean fish tanks. It has never been approved to treat the virus by health agencies, but is being looked at. It has been approved to treat malaria and lupus.

No one suggested the couple should take it.

The story explained that there was no treatment or vaccine for the virus in its ninth paragraph. In the twelfth paragraph, it gave the tweet they read from President Trump: “HYDROXYCHLOROQUINE & AZITHROMYCIN, taken together, have a real chance to be one of the biggest game-changers in the history of medicine.”

 Now, with Coronavirus cases ramping up all over the nation and the President talking about getting our economy back on track by getting as many people as possible back to work, and not talking about how millions and millions of us are still not able to get tested for it , what should we think about his idea that the medicine - our isolation, our closing of stores and factories, of banning large public gatherings and even people gathering at Trump golf courses and resorts - is a lot worse than the disease? After all, a lot of people get it and don’t show any symptoms worse than a mild temperature.

And once they get it, they won’t ever get it again. You know, just like the flu.

Oh, wait a minute. That’s not true.

What do you think of that?

Politics, Again

Well, now that there are two clear candidates to run for President, it’s time for me to get back to writing about politics.

(Pause for applause). (Briefly).

So, where to begin? First, obviously, there is the epidemic raging across our nation and our world. Too big a topic for a modest blog. Besides, we all know what we should be doing, which is avoiding each other for at least a few weeks.

Then we can leave it up to our elected officials to deal with the problems. I know our President said that he suspected long before anyone else that a pandemic was coming, so we can have complete faith that all that can be done is already being done.

So, let’s move on to another topic.

Anyone remember Walt Kelly? Anyone remember Pogo?

If you don’t, let me digress. Kelly was an animator for Disney - he worked on Pinocchio and Dumbo among other films - and went on to become an influential cartoonist. Pogo was his strip, and well worth looking up. He tackled some of our nation’s worst political problems with a searing wit.

His best line, writing about an over-wrought political anger that was destroying our nation, was “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”  Kelly also had some advice worth remembering, ‘Don’t take life so serious, son, it ain’t nohow permanent.”

Well, back to the blog. The topic for today is the destruction of America’s economy, and the best way to save it.

Lots of people in Congress feel that we should just give money away to everyone, which I think is a fine idea. But, instead of writing $1,000 checks to every adult in the nation, I think there should be a deduction.

Anyone who benefited from the trillion dollar tax cut President Trump gave out in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 should have to pay some of it back. To be fair they should pay back ten cents on every dollar they got from that massive tax cut, which left our nation another trillion dollars in debt. So, if you got a $400 tax cut, you would only get $996. If you got a tax cut bigger than $10,000, you would get nothing. Seems fair to me.

Besides, the information on how much we each got back is already on our tax records, so that deduction would be easy to do, and would save us some badly-needed money.

Next, we are talking about bailing out business. We have to save the airlines and the cruise industry, the hotels and restaurants. Not to mention our long commitment to save our farmers from the suffering caused by our tariff war, and teachers and firemen…oh, wait, they aren’t on Congress’s list. Oh, well, you can’t save everything.

Now I would put some restrictions on any bailout for essential industries. What’s essential? Well, it depends on where you stand. It would be a hard argument to say that our country needs to save every on-line streaming service or every brewery, or even every motel.

OF course, if you run the only motel within 50 miles, it becomes more important. Something to consider.

Now, we don’t want anyone to unfairly profit from a bailout because they have political connections, so the first restriction is that no money could go to any business whose owners or relatives are now in government. You know, drain the swamp.

Next - and call me patriotic - I wouldn’t give any bailout money to any industry that makes money in the United States but pays no taxes here because their corporate headquarters is in some other nation. You know, like every cruise line.

In fact, instead of just giving money away to industries, I would just declare a tax holiday, and return every single dollar that a business paid in federal taxes last year.

I’m not sure how many companies would be effected by that. Amazon, of course, paid no federal taxes,  but different studies say that 60 or 80 or more of our Fortune 500 companies paid no federal tax in 2018.

I would also make it illegal for any bailout money to be used to buy back stock, which is a neat trick. If you are a business with 1,000 shares of stock outstanding and pay a 10 cent dividend, you pay out $100 to your stockholders.

But if you buy back 500 shares with that federal money, all of a sudden your dividend doubles. Just like magic. And if you are a CEO with stock options, well you just got richer. And, the value of your stock just went up.

Maybe that’s why compensation committees of those Fortune 500 companies - the ones that set salary and benefits for their CEO’s - keep finding that the man or woman working for them is superior compared to other people doing the same work in other companies.

Just think about that. We have 500 Fortune 500 companies, and at least 400 of them are run be above-average people. Just don’t ask where the 250 below-below-average CEO’s work.

Now when we figure out which industries are essential, we should bail them out.

Before we do, though, we have to ask if we really need so many airlines or cruise ships. If investors want to invest in them, that’s one thing. But if we become the investor, then we have to decide where to put our money.

Now once those big companies get a bail-out package, they should be able to figure out what to do with the money. After all, they did it last time we had to save them.

What did they do back then? Well, lots of companies bought back their stock. It didn’t create many jobs, but it sure pushed the Dow Jones average up. Sadly, it didn’t last.

So, instead of just talking theory, let me give you some ideas about how we can help save the economy, fast.

First, the government should give every person a $100 credit card that could be used only for a prepared food delivery service. Heck, fast food would be fine, so would a meal from a good restaurant. That would keep a lot of people working.

We could even work out a system that would let homeless people get a meal delivered to a shelter.

Second, everyone gets another credit card that can only be used to buy groceries. To keep it from becoming a cruel joke, I would set the card limit at $50 per person, so that a family of six would get more than someone living alone.

Third, I would start a major education program to create the nurses and technicians, lab workers and other support staff needed to keep hospitals running, then re-open the rural hospitals that have been closing for the past decade and build new ones in our cities.

When we do all that, which should be enough to get us through this first crisis, we can take a look at fixing potholes and run-down power systems. 

Give, And Ye Shall Receive

So, I must admit, I am just not doing my job.

Well, not quite that. Ever since I retired, I can brag that I don’t actually have a job. Not, of course, in the traditional sense.

Because I write mostly about politics, the audience for this blog skews toward older readers. I say that because I looked at the turnout in the Democratic primaries, and the 18-29 age category was the most under-represented.

Now,  you may remember that I promised not to write about politics any more until there were just two candidates running for office. I was just too saturated with all the 30-second prepared soundbite yelling, and the fact that the role of “Gotcha Master” had been taken away from reporters by some of the candidates themselves.

 Well, I am mostly keeping my word, even if sometimes a little politics sneaks its nose under the tent. After all, everything comes down to politics sooner or later.

But, to get back to the point, I am not keeping up with all of the duties life had assigned to me. That’s what I mean by not doing my job. I rake leaves in the yard, and more leaves come down. I fill a hole in the yard, and the dogs dig another one. I clean up dog poop after I let them out…well don’t get me started on that one. Or on the cat litter box issue either.

What is bothering me today came in an envelope about a week ago, maybe two. It was a nicely-produced, shiny and attractive page of peel-off labels. It had birds and flowers and rainbows on it, all next to my name and address.

In truth, it was my wife’s name, but New York is a no-fault community property state, so I am fully within my rights to claim 25 of those 50 return address stickers as my own.

And half of the thirty we got two days before that, and the 40 that came earlier that week. And the two or three dozen folded up behind them, all waiting their turn to go on a bill that we will mail back for payment.

My problem is that I don’t write nearly enough letters to use up all those stickers. They come a lot faster than I can send them out.

It would be easier if I wasn’t a little bit of a hoarder or an environmentalist, or if I didn’t believe somewhere deep down that there may be a future literary famine and no more free return address stickers will be coming in. Just think of the seconds I could lose without that convenience.

And this isn’t happening in a vacuum.  I get offers for 10 free trees every summer, letters from the president or his wife - the signature is right there at the bottom of the page - asking for money,  and enough free pens and calendars, paper clips and magnetic stickers to hold a garage sale.

Obviously, I am not using those things up fast enough. See what I mean by not doing my job.

I once felt strongly enough by the plight of some small Indian tribe to send them a donation. They sent me a dream catcher in return. Then another came, and another and another after that. I actually tracked them down, called, and offered to make another donation if they would just take me off their mailing list. That was four dream catchers ago.

It’s like getting a call from someone working for a politician and asking for money. If you donate, they just hire more people to keep calling you and asking for money. That seems to be the only thing that Democrats and Republicans can agree about.

Now I’m wondering just how many return address labels it would take to paper a bathroom wall. It would be different, I admit, but artists are always looking for creative re-use of things.

Think of the artistic statement that would make about modern communications, what cell phones and e-mail have done to letter writing, even about my insecurity over my identity as an artist.

Not to mention my pride in my address, and my love of birds and flowers and even the hearts on the stickers that came around Valentine’s Day.