Patriotism, Again

“Words are not enough, Joe, remembering to say "I love you" every ten days doesn’t cut it. If you really loved me, you would take out the trash without my pestering you, you’d clean up after dinner, you’d help me make the beds, you’d mow the lawns and occasionally do the shopping for our dinner table. You would DO things that showed you love me, that made my life more pleasant, easier. And you would buy me flowers for no reason at all other than you were thinking about me and how much I mean to you.” You know the drill, men, words are not enough, real love is demonstrated with actions.

What do I Stand for?

Many of my readers may think that I am a closet Democrat.  They would be wrong, as for decades national Democrats have been nearly as corrupt as national Republicans.  A pox on both their houses!  Well, then, a closet liberal.  Closer, as many of my political positions are liberal ones.  Nevertheless, I have worn the conservative badge in my life; but we have needed progress more than tradition these last 40 or more years, especially as regards to equal rights for previously marginalized members of our greater society.  But I am not a liberal by today’s standards, or yesterday’s, close as I may be.  I have held, and still do, positions that would shock most Americans, positions that are not liberal or conservative.  For example, I want EVERY wage earner paying some federal income taxes; I do not like the idea of exempting so much income (via the Trump tax cut) that low wage earners pay nothing into the system, they become what may have lost Mitt Romney the presidency in 2012, "dependent" "victims."  If given the choice of who or what to kill – an eagle, falcon, tiger, lion, etc., or a human who is about to shoot one of these endangered creatures – without hesitation, I say kill the human (and I don’t care what the extenuating circumstances are, I have no sympathy whatever for savage humans who kill members of an endangered species for sport or kicks [hunters don't kill endangered species]).  And I care more about people in need than anyone who is financially healthy.  These are not personal preferences, these are political choices (I may have a wealthy friend who I like more than a homeless man, but I want government helping out the homeless dude, before my buddy).

The Electoral College

Repealing the Electoral College is an idea whose time has come! Not!

If you have paid any attention to this question – should we repeal the Electoral College? – you will have noticed that the call for repeal only happens sporadically, specifically after a presidential election elevates the candidate with an Electoral College majority but not a popular vote majority (or even plurality). Then, after only a few months, all the energy for repeal dies, waiting for the next time that electoral votes and popular votes divide us once again.

Postpartum Depression

This blog post is not about how the health care industry discriminates against women. Nor does this post demonstrate conclusively that Ben Paine is a closet sexist (pshew!). And it is barely about the new miracle drug for postpartum depression. Rather, this post is a commentary on Ben’s Care, that the single reason for the high cost of health care in the United States is private health care insurance. Hearing about this new drug on the radio inspired this post.

What is a Right, anyway?

I recently found this gem on my Facebook Timeline, posted there by a “friend” of mine.  It is called A Bill of Non Rights.  The author (Lewis Napper, a computer software engineer from Mississippi who ran for a U.S. Senate seat in 2000) was tired of hearing that every damn thing is a RIGHT (he was a Libertarian, of course), and he made the point (back in 1993) that all sorts of things (food, housing, health care, a job, happiness, etc.) are not “rights,” a point with which I substantially agree.  You may have already seen it on your Facebook Timeline.  But you should read it before continuing to read this post.

Flat Tax, Fair Tax

The “Flat Tax” is a variant of an Income Tax that taxes every dollar of income at the same rate. For example, after determining your taxable income, that amount would be taxed at, say, 25%. Rich or poor, every dollar of taxable income is taxed the same. In some cases (I have never seen an exception), the Flat Tax begins with an exemption of the first $20,000 or $30,000, to soften the blow on low wage earners.

The “Fair Tax” is another variant of an Income Tax that is really a fixed-rate Sales Tax or Consumption Tax. For example, you do some shopping at your local Big Box store and end up with a big wagon of stuff; in addition to local and state sales taxes on individual items, there would be a fixed rate federal Sales Tax on the total checkout that would be the same in every locality in the nation, and this would replace the old Income Tax. And like the Flat Tax, the Fair Tax begins with what they call a “prebate,” a monthly check, to soften the blow on low-wage earners (and everyone else).

Term Limits

Often when I impose my favorite topic (“we are NOT a democracy and what are we going to do about it?”) on other people, someone suggests Term Limits as his solution. “Term Limits will keep our elected officials from spending half their time dialing for dollars, especially with the donor class; it will keep lobbyists off their backs.” When I ask, “limited to how many terms?,” they invariably say two, "as they will need some time to learn their new jobs.” When I object that they will be dialing for dollars through that first term, the discussion ends of its own weight as this solution is not a perfect fix of the problem. And arguing over a detail is never much fun.

A Wealth Tax

I have been thinking about a Wealth Tax for a few years now.  Indeed, I think about it so often that I imagined that I had already written a blog post about it.  I checked and I had not!  So, here it is. 

I got kicked in the head when I learned, just a few months ago, that Senator (and recently declared candidate for President from the Democratic Party) Elizabeth Warren was proposing a wealth tax.  All of a sudden, my idea was not original, Warren had beat me to the punch.  Not so!  Her idea was a surcharge on the wealthiest men in the land, while my Wealth Tax replaces the federal Income Tax and the federal Capital Gains Tax altogether.  No more taxation of incomes and no more tax on capital gains!  Got that?

The Tail that Wags the Tail …

Not ready for prime time, come back later!

When the tail wags the dog, the dog is in ... trouble. When a small and relatively insignificant part (the tail) of the whole (the dog) is so powerful that the whole does what the part dictates, something is wrong. Cancer works this way; a few cells begin to multiply out of control and the body begins its march toward inevitable death. But when the tail wags the tail that wags the dog, it is as though a flea in the tail is wagging the tail that wags the dog; here, things are really not the way they should be. The Dog in our parable is the Economy, the national economy or the world economy. The Tail is Finance, or the Financial System. The financial system is those “industries” whose sole “product” is money. Banking, insurance, brokerage and – lest we forget – gambling. All other industries deal in real products and services, things we can actually touch and see and feel; only Finance has no real product and no service that is not an instance of Paul trading money with Peter. Banking pays you interest for your deposits, and gives you loans and mortgages for your promise of future payments of returned principal and the interest thereon. Insurance isolates you from low-risk but high cost phenomena in your lives, like your home burning down or your needing major heart surgery. Brokerage lets you invest in some piece of the overall economy, taking a small risk to get better returns on your capital than would otherwise be available with a savings account from your local "commercial" bank. And gambling, an industry of negative social utility that seduces you into the belief that you can get rich with no real effort and then swallows all your money, but not before assuring you that you will do better next time, guaranteed! This is Finance.

The Ghost of Reagan Past

That icon of mid-20th century American Conservatism, the 40th president of the United States, Ronald Reagan, is famous for saying, “Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem” and “The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help.”   These are very clever words and they have resonated with millions of Americans, from then until now.

But they do not resonate with me, they are far too cynical for my taste.