Flat isn't fair

        Regarding the discussion over "fair" in the larger conversation about tax. Fair is the term used by multi-millionaires like Steve Forbes when they are shilling for Flat Tax schemes. The word fair, to them means everyone pays an equal percentage. Perhaps a better way to look at "fair" would be that a taxation scheme should not unreasonably disadvantage any sector of the population at the advance of another.

     Steve Forbes  proposed that everyone should pay a flat 10% of income as taxes and all would be well with the world. Let's use reductio ad absurdum to show the point. After all isn't that "fair"?  On that basis, let's take an obviously  uncommon situation. Consider that a man with a $5 million income (read "The Big Short" if you think those people aren't around!) also consider the gardener who works for him at $9.00 an hour, which is, actually above minimum wage.

        The gardener works a solid  forty hour week and earns a whopping $18,000 annually, which sadly is considered above the federal poverty guidelines for a family of two, which is $15,930. But wait, there's more. Unless the employer is a scofflaw or the gardener is an independent contractor  who refuses to pay them, there is the issue of Social Security and Medicare taxes. For the hapless gardener, all of his pay is subject to FICA and Medicare withholding, so he is hit for a total of $1,377 off the top. He now has $16,623 left, on which a 10% flat tax will take him to $14,961, and deep into the poverty classification. Remember, he works hard, arguably harder than the employer, certainly with fewer perks and shorter lunch breaks.

        His employer, on the other hand , also pays FICA, but only on .23% of his income, because Social Security withholding maxes out at an income of $118,000  annually. So the "flat taxers" omit the dirty little secret, which is that the laborer earning $18,000 actually pays 6.2% of his wages for Social security, while his far wealthier boss actually only pays a measly 0.14% of his. Fair? What do you think Craig?  Well,  consider this: as a risk/reward exercise, the laborer pays 6.2% of his income for his entire working life, but will have his Social security income calculated based on his actual earnings. The millionaire will only pay 0.14 % of his , but will likewise have his Social Security based on his actual earnings.   

        Now let us consider the $5 mil guy. He "earns" $5,000,000 annually but stops paying Social security at $118,000, so he pays 6.5 times as much into FICA, but he earns 277 times as much! And he will reap much higher benefits, roughly 3 times as much.  Still fair? Huh?  As for Medicare, the rate is constant regardless of income, so they both pay the 1.45%  Medicare withholding. Adding all this up, the $5 mil guy pays FICA and Medicare a total of $77,347.  deduct an additional 10%  ("flat" remember), tax  and he is left to struggle by on only $4,430,388! Of course this assumes no off shore or tax dodge shenanigans to hide income.   So the issue is "whose life style is affected most by the 10%? flat tax? Is the impact "equal" or "fair"  I would submit that it is not. Even after both reach retirement, assuming the gardener and his wife both worked the same jobs for the same pay, they will barely be able to reach the poverty level - without children. Then, the rich man says "Well, he should have saved for his retirement!" Really? There simply is no marginal, or savable income at $18,000 per year. IRAs, flexible spending accounts, investments....? These are just letters and words to the average laboring person in America. And, remember , this doesn't even consider the cost of healthcare.

        A flat tax is inherently unfair for those who are already close to the margins an haven't been born, to use Kent's appropriate word, lucky, or not as intellectually gifted. People just like that built much of the infrastructure of this country while living in or close to poverty. We can do better, and a tax structure  steeply graduated at the top would help us to do so.

       Finally, to hear the whining of the trust fund candidates, you'd think we pay the highest taxes ever right now. Trump actually said we were "The most highly taxed developed country in the world." The graphic above shows just how ignorant he and many are.     

Econ 101 - not!

        As if we needed proof that many members of Congress are simply self aggrandizing windbags, here's the latest "newsletter" sent by my Congressman, Rep. Richard  Nugent (what is about people named Nugent?). I assume I am on his mailing list because I sent him a letter months ago regarding the  price gouging taking place at the USNA gift shop.  

"Dear Friends,

The President released his budget on Tuesday and it was much of what we have come to expect out of his office: more taxes, more spending, and more debt. It even included an inexplicable $10-a-barrel tax on oil. You think the oil companies will incur this cost? Absolutely not. They will no doubt pass this financial burden on to consumers, potentially increasing the price per gallon you pay at the pump by nearly 25 cents. And you can imagine what this tax might do to airline, tourism and shipping customers. The point is, the Administration continues to punish the middle class by siding against America’s energy resources.........."(and it continues in another direction).

My response - probably the last, since I think I'm now off the Christmas card list!

Congressman Nugent,

 Considering the Consumer Price Index (CPI) change from 1955 until the current year, gas prices indexed to inflation are at least a dollar a gallon below what they would be if the price of fuel had simply kept pace with inflation. Of course, in reality, gas prices adjusted for inflation are actually significantly lower  than they were when I was a lad and that was 65 years ago.  Many counties in Florida and elsewhere have increased tax on price per gallon at the pump in recognition of this. Yet when this President proposes it you think it will hurt "airline, tourism and shipping customers." Really?  

Adding $10 per barrel, assuming none of it was borne by the energy corporations  (it wouldn't be, because corporate shills in Congress would make sure it wasn't) would work out to about 23 cents per gallon of refined fuel (gas and diesel) at 42 gallons per barrel which is the average across the industry. That would still leave gas prices about $1.50/gallon below 2011 prices, at somewhere close to $2.00/gallon. Why weren't you screaming "foul" when gas was at $3.75 per gallon, yet you're now heartily offended by the fact that it might be $2.00 per gallon? Do you even read what you or your staffers write?

Federal tax on fuel has remained at 18.4 cents/gallon since 1993. Over the same time span the CPI has increased by a factor of 1.8. Even the basic 1 semester  economics course required for all Florida high school students would teach that the impact of federal fuel tax, adjusted to CPI,  has decreased by almost 50% over the span from 1993 to the present. I assume most who read this have few resources for critical analysis and read it, delete it and think, "Yep, old Rich is my guy!" Tragic, that.  And as expected, I see you played the "class warfare" card again. Please take me off the mailing list.

                                                                                                                      Michael Dorman                                                      MMCM(SS) USN (Ret)

                                     The Villages  

American tragedy

We have recently heard   sound bites and seen news blurbs along the line of "Carson throws red meat to the evangelicals." This refers to the bottom of the barrel former surgeon and current moron's last desperate clutch at the so-called consciences of the far right self styled Christians.  The gist of his message is that the government needs to "protect" Christians from attacks on their religious beliefs. This is hardly new, since Republican vote whores have been invoking this since Jerry Falwell was cruising men's rooms in Roanoke. Oh, that wasn't him? My bad.

Carson,  just like the multitude of sycophants (a dwindling mass, true) who hang on his every word, just doesn't get it. Some of those on the far right are aware that they are lying but are willing to do it for votes. Ben Carson isn't and never has been, that smart. In the faint  hope that even one person might  accidently  read this and go, "Oh, really? I didn't know that,"  I will endeavor one last time to parse this issue in simplest terms.

The definition generally starts like this: "Marriage, also called matrimony or wedlock, is a socially or ritually recognized union or legal contract between spouses that establishes rights and obligations between them......"

The origins of this practice are not religious, but practical, the object being to delineate by law such things as inheritance and property rights.  The Pilgrims, those paragons of early American Christian virtue  considered marriage too important to do as a religious sacrament, rather it was done as a legal proceeding. In many cases, but not all, there might well have been a ceremony following which was religious. In fact, the "definition" of marriage was done by persons of various faiths taking it from legal into the faith related arena. The basic legal nature of marriage is immediately recognized by several factors. First, special dispensation has been passed to the clergy to perform such unions, but judges, ship captains and other functionaries may perform them with zero religious connotation. It remains the only legally binding duty of the clergy. 

So what the Christian right really wants is the right to define marriage as they want, which right they have always had, just like defining "beauty'' or any other subjective issue. They are, of course welcome to, in their private lives cling to that belief. What many either don't know (doubtful) or, more likely don't want to recognize, is that marriage (the legal definition, not the religious one) carries rights and responsibilities without any further burden on the spouses. There are assumed relationships and prerogatives  which are conferred due to wedlock which would require reams of paperwork for non spousal couples to complete just to insure the same basic  rights. 

Hospital visitation, co- insurance, inheritance, shared domicile, joint tax status, etc are but a few such matters. By law, an unmarried couple (same sex or man and woman) have few if any rights. The classic case is a same sex couple of 20 or more years' relationship, who when one becomes ill, the parents of the other step in and forbid the partner even the civility of hospital visitation. In one such case of which I am aware , the parents  came to the house and seized their son's belongings, even though they were actually joint property.

Marry these two and the game changes , dramatically.  Just one piece of paper. Marriage is about property rights,  and all citizens who make that commitment deserve the full protection of the law.  If a couple decides to also hold a religious ceremony, so be it.  No one in the world has ever tried to deny them that. 

Or have they?  Consider  the USSC case of   Loving  vs. Virginia, decided in 1967. In 1958,  a mixed race couple married in the District of Columbia and returned to their home in Virginia. They were promptly charged with violating a Virginia Statute of some 40 years' standing, which forbid "white" and "colored" persons to marry.  Understand, Virginia (and several other Southern states had defined marriage as a union between persons only of the same racial background. Is that Biblical? Hardly.  Is it racist and bigoted? Of course. In fact that darling of mindless conservatives everywhere, Clarence Thomas,  only missed the same fate by four years, marrying his white college sweetheart in 1971.  

So claiming religious rectitude and claiming abrogation of rights simply because you don't get to define this legal process the way others may, has precedent. Loving vs. Virginia was specifically cited as precedent in the recent same sex marriage decision by the USSC. 

It's simple really. In Carson Land, persons who are by their  nature heterosexual are welcome to all the legal benefits of marriage, while persons who are,  just as much by nature, homosexual  face the ire of the Carsons, Cruzes, Santorums and others  who, far from being attacked, are on the offensive in circumstances which harm no one, simply because they think differently. Their rights are not under attack. What they really fear is the loss of the ability to abuse blameless persons by forcing them  to conform to their beliefs.  They are ignorant people who wear that ignorance as if it were the red badge of courage. The American tragedy is that anyone with a brain listens to their vile drivel.

American Taliban

American Taliban

         Well, kids, it's Thursday again, which means that somewhere, in America, as they do  every other day,  Far  Rightist Evangelical  sycophants  such as Santorum, Carson, Cruz and Rubio will be attacking  current Presidential policy and all things liberal per their usual political bent, all while asserting that God wants them to become president so they can set the world aright. 

       One pundit, however has been even more direct , although equally misguided.  Kathryn Lopez recently reached  new heights of misdirection and outright falsehood in a column entitled "Warren, God and the freedom to choose." She quoted  Rick Warren, another of those mega church pastors whose cult of personality influences his congregation to react to stimuli the way shoals of fish and flocks of birds all seem to  turn at the same time. Warren's Saddleback Evangelical Church, by the way, rakes in  a cool  $2.4 million annually for spouting the following drivel while paying no (as in zero) taxes .

          "Can we really talk about the state of our union without talking about the state of our religious freedom?" Warren says. He further states that  religious freedom is "The freedom to practice my faith and values and the freedom to convert."  Ms Lopez is the far Right's ideal mouthpiece, being a Filipina of brown hue and a devout ultra conservative Catholic, which might lead the ignorant observer to think that perhaps the Republican party represents America's minorities. She then writes, "He cautions against the misreading of tolerance - mistakenly taking all ideas to be of equal value and dismissing the existence of truth." 

          Of course, the "truth" she alludes to is purely her personal credo, not some great cosmological absolute, as she would have one believe. It is her perception and belief (note the word belief) about the nature of God, the universe, morality, etc.  Ms. Lopez certainly must be  aware that more people in the world have other "truths" than those who believe as she does. In dismissing other tenets, credos and beliefs  as being of lesser value, she is not only supremely arrogant, but also  diametrically opposed to Jefferson, Madison, Washington, and others who had the foresight to endorse the intent and meaning of the First Amendment.

          Then President, George   Washington in his letter of 1790 to the Hebrew  Congregation in Newport  eloquently wrote, "The Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens in giving it on all occasions their effectual support."  Ms Lopez, a Catholic, has clearly decided that her "truth" is exclusive. As to Mr. Warren's "freedom to convert" line, I would opine  that those of us who disagree with his personal "truth" should also be allowed to be free from his conversion  efforts.

         

          Claims from the far right that religious freedom in America is abridged or under attack by current law are specious. In fact,  current legislative efforts protect freedom from the religiously driven  prejudicial acts of the true believers among us. This is manifested, when, for example, a pharmacist refuses to fill a prescription for the "morning after" pill, citing personal beliefs as the reason.  His religious freedom is the freedom to oppose abortion in his personal realm -  family, church, whatever - period. It is equally evident when a Kim Davis refuses to issue a marriage license. The (il)logic involved is ludicrous. When , in the name of subjective "truth," that belief infringes on another's life, that isn't religious freedom;  it's religious oppression. The only difference between the pharmacist, Kim Davis and a Talibani believer who murders schoolgirls is in degree, not principal.

          It's really as simple as that. Those who would impose their beliefs on others, feel justified in doing so because theirs is the "real and only" truth. All others are lesser persons until converted. I reiterate, in far too many instances the only difference between aggressive evangelicals and the Taliban is headwear and the language they speak.

"Real" Housewife, my ass!

        So today on Good  Morning  America  we're treated to an interview with Theresa Guidice about her  recently completed 15 months in prison. "It was Hell," she said with a lowering of the eyes and a sorrowful look worthy of my Bassett hound.   So who is she and why is she news?

       Perhaps the most newsworthy thing about this scofflaw ex-con is that anyone thinks she merits attention. She was elevated to notoriety due to her role in "The Real housewives of New Jersey;" but of course she was neither "real" nor a housewife. A former assistant buyer at Macy's , the show featured her all too frequent temper tantrums as well as her over the top lifestyle, which we now know was funded by over $10 million dollars worth of bank, mail and wire fraud. The worst part of "Hell" as she describes it was having to clean tables three days a week and take cold showers. Based on this tragic narrative, Navy boot camp would have killed her.

        After the  expected denials, she and her even more odious   husband,  Joe, pled guilty to 41 counts related to their  illegally gotten gains. She was sentenced to 15 months in a minimum security facility, Danbury Correctional, the same country club Martha Stewart attended, but allowed to do her stretch before her hubby does his 41 months, in  a military  jail at Fort Dix, NJ.  On release, Joe, who also was convicted of obtaining a driver's license on false pretense (his former DUIs made it hard to do on his own) and failing to pay income tax for several years, will face the possibility of deportation, as he is not a US citizen. Why deportation? Well it seems he (Joe) has been in the US since he was a toddler (well over 40 years), but  just never made it around to becoming an American citizen.  Good! Send him home.  

        It troubles me that anyone with a brain would consider these two pathetic ego driven criminals worthy of either an interview or sympathy. Of course Theresa was also briefly on Celebrity Apprentice. Come to think of it, I guess maybe the same morons who consider the Guidices newsworthy are the same morons who fawn over  the myth, smoke and mirrors that are Donald Trump.

What you "know" might not be what you think you know

        I play golf with several good friends, many of  whom are more conservative than I.  because we are rational persons and good friends, that never gets in the way of out friendships, but it does lead to interesting conversations within the hallowed confines of the golf cart, sometimes.

        Yesterday, One such discussion took the line of "We used to have great healthcare in  (name of home state) , but that damned  Obamacare  ruined it."  At this point I was forced to reflect for a moment on what one could possibly have to do with the other.  Further discussion revealed my friend's growing dissatisfaction with the situation of a close relative who is disabled and in hospital following a serious accident. As the individual in question is in their later years, I asked one simple question. "Is (the person) on Medicare?" The answer, in the affirmative, hammered home the point once again that there are people who will blame anything and everything health related (or otherwise, too) on the current resident of the White House. I refused to let this drop, pointing out several times the fact that Medicare isn't in any real way related to the Affordable Care Act, especially in this case. He harrumphed, and we left it at that.

        Later in the round, discussing mutual interests with a far more informed friend and superb cart mate, I asked how they felt about single payer health care. The immediate response as I knew it would be, was that they were opposed to it. My innocent question "So you don't use Medicare?" was met with the sound of crickets.  

        I say that to say this: If you are a conservative who takes what seems to be the reflexive Far Right point that national or single payer health care systems don't work or are opposed to them as "socialist schemes," then you must realize that we already have a significant number of Americans on single payer healthcare and have for almost 50 years. Over 50 million Americans are currently using a National, single payer, healthcare system. Because this system was forbidden by legislation passed and signed by the Bush administration in 2001,  Medicare pays far more in costs to providers than other such systems.  2003 legislation, a gift to the drug industry (whose lobbying expenses are larger that their Research expenditures every year for the past 15) stipulates that Medicare, Part D will not be allowed to negotiate lower drug prices, as do European systems, which frequently pay 1/10 the price for the identical brand name drugs.  

        Drug companies imply that  they must impose higher prices in the U.S. to pay for research that enables them to innovate and develop new drugs that save  lives. Reality is far different. Half of the scientifically innovative drugs approved in the U.S. from 1998 to 2007 resulted from research at universities and biotech firms, not big drug companies. Despite their rhetoric, drug companies spend 19 times more on marketing than on research and development.”

        Meanwhile, the US spends twice as much (as a % of GDP, a fair way to evaluate) per capita per year as the UK does on healthcare. Don't blame the Affordable Care Act, and don't think you're not already paying for universal healthcare for a large sector of the populace. Don't like the ACA? Then maybe you should shut your ears to the rhetoric of Cruz, Rubio and others , do the research and make up your own mind about the realities of single payer health care.    

Life lessons learned

Life lessons learned

Being  pleasant with  people takes waay less energy than being a dick.

Always check the roll of toilet tissue before you sit.

The probability of the dishwasher being full of clean dishes is directly  proportional to the number of dirty ones you just created.

Bras never, ever  go in the dryer.

Always check the bottom of the bag before you pick up dog  poo. 

The trash will never take itself out.

Golf is inherently evil.

Barking dogs, like people,  rarely bite. It's the quiet ones who bite you in the ass.

I don't inherently mistrust people who don't like dogs. On the other hand I am always suspicious of people whom dogs don't like.

Those who know the most about good teaching tend to get the least press.

Dogs have owners, cats, on the other hand, see us more as  staff.

"Pre-election season"  is far too long. The Brits do it right by limiting campaigning to six weeks.

Dogs have many different expressions with many meanings, Cats do too, but they all mean  "feed me, bitch."

Assisted suicide is illegal in most states, but you can buy cigarettes anywhere.

Canine breeders are far more selective than human ones, and generally to a better end.

The later I get up, the earlier the trash pickup occurs.

If a drug's side effects outnumber the benefits, don't use it.

You have been lied to; broken cookies still have calories.