Posted on by rjonakait

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More bad news: Two recent studies conclude that mosquitos are more likely to land on those drinking beer than on other people.

The headline was a frightening thought: “Kissinger Turns 100 With His Brain as Sharp and Wise as Ever.”

Florida is limiting the ability of Chinese nationals to buy property. Should the many Jewish Sunshine State residents worry that they may not have a place to dine on Christmas?

A billionaire hedge fund guy said that a billionaire banking guy should run for president. Bill Ackman said that Jamie Dimon is “extremely smart,” respected by all aspects of the political spectrum, beloved by his employees, and a centrist. Ackman, without further elucidation, said that Dimon is “supportive of well-designed social programs and rational tax policies that can help the less fortunate.” And Dimon “is pro-business and pro-free enterprise.” Ackman did not mention that the natural tendency for business is to manipulate government for its own benefit and to seek monopolies and cartels. Thus, many businesses try hard not to be part of a free-enterprise system. Pro-business and pro-free enterprise seldom, if ever, go together.

Kurt Andersen, in Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America, A Recent History (2020), maintains that the optimal tax rate on high incomes is the rate that raises the maximum possible revenue. He reports, “Economic research shows convincingly that the self-defeating level of taxation is much higher than our highest federal income tax rate has been for the last forty years” or a top marginal rate of at least 48 percent and maybe as high as 76%.

I have heard often of the “undeserving poor,” but never of the “undeserving rich.” Aren’t there a lot in that latter category?

I went recently to Yankee stadium to see my first in-person game of the season. Many kids were also in attendance. After the sixth inning, we all watched what is now a ritual: the grounds crew drags the infield to the song “Y.M.C.A.,” but they stop and drop their equipment at the appropriate moment and do the arm gestures to spell out the song’s title. As I watched many in the stands, including many kids, join in, I wondered if this song is banned at sporting events in the Don’t-Say-Gay State.

The original video by the Village People of “Y.M.C.A.” did not include the movements to spell out the title. One source says they were created by dancers on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand.

Some people maintain that the song was only meant to be about playing sports at a YMCA and nothing to do with gay behavior, but that original video prominently featured the singers in front of a sign for Ramrod, a bar that sought straight members but not a straight clientele.

“In God We Trust” was the decal on the back of the truck. I doubted that meant, as it should have, the driver of the vehicle would never possess a gun for “personal protection.” I thought about the awkward construction of “In God We Trust,” and how it might be blue-penciled into “We Trust in God.” Then I wondered if there is a difference in meaning between “We Trust in God” and “We Trust God.” Sometimes, you must keep your mind occupied on I-80.

Posted on by rjonakait

Snippets

People can be so nice. Apparently my car warranty was about to expire, but I got (at least fifteen) “courtesy calls” about it before they closed my file. Very considerate.

How many people do you know who take almost no time to get to their wit’s end?

I have heard often of the “undeserving poor,” but never of the “undeserving rich.” Aren’t there a lot in that latter category?

I asked the kid what superpowers he would like to have. He said, “Not to have to tie my shoes.”

How would your thinking have changed if you had grown up without hearing about plantations but instead heard the more accurate “forced labor camps”?

I was on a park bench. Off to my left a man was ranting. Police were around the apparently mentally ill person, dealing with him patiently. On the next bench were people who panhandled in the park and seemed to know the ranter. One of them looked at the police, saw a blonde officer, and said, “Look at her. She doesn’t look like a cop. Why did she become a cop? She should have been, uh, uh, uh, a chemist, or something.”

I hoped it was for a law firm, but it did not say so. The billboard read: “Medical malpractice is all we do.”

It was a remarkable sight, the man wearing sweatpants held up by suspenders.

Do you remember when “Close Cover before Striking” was the most printed phrase in the English language?

In a park or outside an old house, I would come across a hand pump as a kid. Of course, I had to try it. The first couple strokes always seemed hard, but with minimal persistence they became easier. As I pumped, I would wonder if the pump still worked. Was there really water down there? Sometimes the effort produced nothing, but with others, a little water would spurt out. That sight produced a quickened, more forceful stroke. Then larger spurts, and finally, a stream without interruption. These efforts always produced a smile and a sense of accomplishment–a satisfaction that most in a younger generation will never have.

The doctor’s assistant taking my health history got to that now-routine question about sexuality.  But she said, “If you had to have sex, would it be with the opposite sex, the same, or both?” If I had to have sex?  My mind went through my sexual history. The last time someone held a gun to my head and said, “Have sex or else,” my performance must have been so inadequate that I can’t remember it.

I recently met a couple. He was six feet ten. She was shy of five feet even. What questions would you have liked to ask?

Posted on by rjonakait

Snippets

          The government proposes to send checks of a thousand or more dollars directly to Americans, but the Treasury Secretary says this money will not go to millionaires. I assume that if he is true to “conservative” Republican principles, those rich people will get a tax break instead.

          I have heard often of the “undeserving poor,” but never of the “undeserving rich.” Are you like me and think that that second category is quite large?

          Republicans seemed to be hoping that Bernie Sanders would be the Democratic nominee so that they could run against “socialism,” even though Sanders refers to himself as a Democratic Socialist. I have been thinking about socialism as the government gets nearer to a bailout of corporations because of the present economic collapse. The words of Edward E. Baptist in The Half Has Never Been told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism have come to mind: “Privatizing the gains of investment; socializing the risk. This is a classic strategy for politically powerful entrepreneurs.” Socializing the risk does sound like socialism, but that does not mean that even if we see the corporate economic aid for what it is that we should not have it. Instead, we should ask if a bailout is good for society. If it is, then we should do it. I thought something similar when a while back I heard a panel on a news network discussing whether healthcare is a right. This was not the correct question. Instead, we should ask: Is universal healthcare good for society?

          On a recent trip, a fellow traveler to Sicily, who was my age, had come from Germany to the United States as a child when his father accepted a job with a brewery in Tampa, Florida. He said that it had been hard to leave his friends, but America was then very exciting, and, of course, it was the setting for the western stories he loved of Karl May (you can look him up) and for the American cowboy movies and TV shows he watched. He said that many Europeans view the United States differently today than they did back then and had no desire now to move to America. They do not want to live without universal healthcare; have expensive “public” colleges and universities and other “public” education that is supported with bake sales; and do not want to live where the middle class is shrinking.

          The government’s efforts to soften the economic decline will increase the already burgeoning federal deficit, which, of course, increased because of the “conservative” tax cuts a few years ago. (Prediction: “Conservatives” will care about the deficit when, and only when, a Democrat becomes President.) Buried in Trump’s last budget sent to Congress was the assertion that our deficits may be unsustainable; that by 2024 interest payments may be higher than defense spending; and that even now interest payments are higher than Medicaid spending. A goodly portion of my taxes, then, go not to the federal government but to interest payments. My money is being transferred to individuals, non-government entities, or other government who had the wherewithal to lend the government money. These are not the down and out. Surely, those lenders are wealthier than I am. Aren’t the interest payments, then, a form of wealth redistribution where the government funnels money from the less wealthy to the very wealthy?

          “Every evil, harm, and suffering in this life or in the next comes from the love of riches.” St. Catherine of Siena.