Posted on by rjonakait

Snippets

The response to a mass shooting in a liberal state or city: If only you had gun-friendly laws, a good guy with a gun would have stopped the carnage. There have been mass shootings in Montana and elsewhere where the restrictions on guns are few. Where was that “good guy” with a gun? And the mass shootings continue.

A highly placed source has confidentially informed me why so many ICE agents wear masks. They are concealing that they are aliens. No, not people from a foreign government, but beings from another planet. Apparently, ICE cannot find enough American humans to do the job.

A new friend insisted that I read Showdown at Gucci Culch: Lawmakers, Lobbyists, and the Unlikely Triumph of Tax Reform (1987) by Jeffrey H. Birnbaum & Alan S. Murray. The book chronicles the passage of the 1986 tax reform bill. The book contained more detail than I cared to read, but some details had an up-to-date relevance. For example, the authors point out that at the close of nineteenth century, federal revenue came from tariffs and excise taxes, which operated similarly to sales taxes as an exaction on consumers and placed a heavy burden on low-income Americans. An income tax was considered a fairer way to raise money to fund the government. The Revenue Act of 1913 simultaneously imposed a tax on large incomes and reduced tariff rates. We are now taking the opposite course by reducing taxes on large incomes and increasing tariff rates. The 1986 tax reform was led by President Ronald Reagan, and we are diverging from it. That 1986 package incorporated the largest corporate tax increase in history. Now, of course, we are reducing corporate taxes. We now also ignore what is known and obvious: Our taxes are uneven and unfair in part because some people simply don’t pay them. In 1986, there were estimates that every dollar of increased IRS enforcement led to the collection of ten dollars of previously uncollected tax revenue. We, of course, now reduce enforcement by the IRS.

As the night wears on, my curiosity increases. What will Dee Dee Gatton be wearing at The National News Desk?

Pesky pronouns. I call the Roomba “he.” The spouse calls the Roomba “she.” What is right? Neither of us thinks of Roomba as an “it.” Surely not “they.”

I was driving across Manhattan to get to the entrance of the FDR drive at 96th Street. The traffic slowed as I got to the traffic light. I could see a panhandler approaching. Most often I gently shake my head indicating not today, but this was one of those every so often days when I dug for my wallet. The spouse beat me and handed me a bill. The panhandler blessed me, smiled, and asked what I had not expected. “Are you a Yankee or Mets fan?” I replied, “How many Mets fans do you get here.” He did not answer but said that Aaron Judge had just driven through. The panhandler told me that Judge was on his way to Yankee stadium where the team was playing the Astros that night. Just before the traffic started moving again, he said, almost laughing, “He makes a gazillion dollars, and he did not give me a cent.” And then, “Have a good rest of the day.” I turned to the spouse, “I still love New York.”

Posted on by rjonakait

The Con Man

I was walking in Manhattan miles from my home. A black man approached me and in the friendliest fashion said hello. I nodded, thought “panhandler” even though he was not shabbily dressed, and continued on. He turned to walk with me and said with companionable incredulity, “You don’t remember me?” I perhaps took my first real look at him, pondered, and said no. “We met at your place.” I studied him again and hesitated. “My sister works for you, and we met when I came over to see her one day.” He almost sounded hurt. Perhaps I should have walked away at this point. I knew it was a con. A woman did work for us, but her siblings were sisters. I, however, was not hurrying anywhere and was intrigued. “Oh,” I said.

He then continued, “We met when you were coming home from work, I think.” I don’t remember my precise replies, but anything specific I said he would weave into his patter–not immediately, but after a sentence or two. For example, if I had said that I usually got to Brooklyn about six, he would find a way to mention Brooklyn as my home as if he had always known that. Only when the talk lasted long enough to seem as if we were reunited long-lost buddies did the pitch come. This was a familiar one about car trouble. His car suddenly stopped working, and he needed some money for a tow or a new battery. Only rarely do I give money to panhandlers, but I did give him something. I often stop to watch street performers and drop a bill or two into their cap when I especially like them, and I thought this guy qualified as a very good street performer of sorts.

Few street performers I have seen play on race, but a troupe I have watched several times on the Central Park Mall does. They are six or so young black men who do tumbling and acrobatic passes to the background of music with a heavy beat coming from boom boxes. They ask a few of the audience members for their hometowns. The majority are tourists, and what could be a better New York experience than to be in Central Park watching this group perform?  You don’t see that back in Ada, Ohio. They have a patter that is as honed as a vaudeville act, and it plays up race and touches on racial fears. As one starts his run for a tumbling pass, another says, “That is as fast as you will see a black man run not being chased by a cop.” “If we weren’t here getting donations from you, we would be breaking into your homes.”

The guy who approached me on the street, however, used race in a more subtle way. His astonishment at not being recognized was a play on white guilt. Don’t many of us secretly worry that we fall into that group that think so many black men do look alike? And not wanting to be rude to a black man then tends to make us stop and at least briefly hear what he has to say.

I wondered how often he had to approach people like me for his sister line to succeed. Does one of every five, ten, or twenty white men walking in a Manhattan neighborhood have a black woman working for him at home? Surely in five or ten minutes he could encounter some such person. And, of course, the odds would be good that the nanny or cleaner has a brother. In any event, probably few of the white men know much about the lives of the women that work in their home. I was different from many because I worked at home for about half the time and chatted with people who cleaned or helped take care of the daughter.

The guy, however, was skillful beyond getting me to stop and listen a bit. Besides the line about his sister, he said nothing that could seem wrong and send up flags. Instead he was adept in getting me to say things that he could use to make it seem as if he already knew me. He was good at his craft.

After I gave him some money, I wanted to stop him and tell him I knew it was a con and ask him how he had developed his line, how often it worked, and how much he made. But, just like insisting on finding out how a magician does his tricks, it would have destroyed the moment.