Hit and Run

Okay, I admit it. My trip south last month wasn't exactly the Shackleton Expedition to Antarctica, was it? There was some way cool stuff. But still. When the final portion of something—the ending—goes badly or is disappointing, that frequently becomes the lingering, lasting image.

The taste that remains on the tongue after the sweet has washed away.

Is it an outgrowth of that portion of us which reacts more-powerfully to negative news than positive? Is it tied in some remote way to our survival instincts? To better enable the survival of the species?

I wonder as I wander, people.

A carton of Trader Joe's Carne Asada burritos to Brooklyn Nets owner Joseph Tsai for calling out his point guard, Kyrie Irving.

I mean, kudos to Kyrie for landing in a profession where he can say and do pretty much whatever he wants—for as long as he can dribble and shoot a basketball, anyway. And for the generational wealth he's accruing.

Nice.

But to put it mildly, Kyrie is a flake. Selfish. And a knee-jerk contrarian. And yes, he gets to do that. Just like I do. Or you. I get it. But sabotaging the efforts of your teammates and the man who is paying you prodigious sums of money because you're a self-appointed medical expert and don't “believe” in vaccines?

That is messed up.

You want to make socio-political statements? Fine. But do it when you're the only one suffering the consequences. Do it on your time—not the company's.

You conceivably cost the Nets and their fans a title. How do you feel about that? Do you feel anything at all? Your behavior is the equivalent of a player ignoring two open teammates as he forces a three-on-one in the paint.

Please don't ever play for Chicago, okay?

On August 9, 2020 James Massey got on Facebook and posted this: ATTENTION ATTENTION LOTTING (sic) START AT 12am. DOWNTOWN AREA AND UP NORTH AREA ONLY BRING YA TOOLS SKI MASK AND GLOVES.

Falls a little short of “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country” but there you go. Exploiting the simmering social unrest in the wake of George Floyd's death at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer, the would-be entrepreneur orchestrated a mass smash-and-grab on social media that proved catastrophic for the city.

Lost in the shattered glass and the police lights and the burglar alarms was the irony: it was a physical manifestation of what the Republican-enabled one-percent have been doing to the country for years.

Not so ironic is that only one group faces consequences.

And while Massey's 15-month sentence for inciting that rioting in Chicago is more than Donald Trump will ever see for January 6th, I still have to feel it falls a little short. Keep in mind that with time off for good behavior, that gets halved.

Not sure how hundreds of millions of dollars in property damage and irreparable damage to the city translates to fifteen-months, but what do I know?

What I do know is that twenty-one months after the looting, the city still hasn't healed.

Ah. The world is such an imperfect place.

Sigh.

 

The Perfect Metaphor

Yikes! This is the last time I write under the influence!

Did a mild re-do this afternoon, hopefully resulting in a better read and argument.

As an English major, I possessed a deep appreciation of symbolism. Ensconced in a nerdy kind of awe, I marveled at how a single object or circumstance could represent and articulate a far-greater reality.

So when the news that Jeff Bezos and his ostentatious yacht would require the dismantling of a historic and recently-refurbished bridge in the Netherlands in order for it to reach the open sea, I immediately seized on it as the perfect representation of twenty-first century America.

With a combination of our elected representation and the Supreme Court either eroding fiscal legislation meant to keep Wall St. and our banks on a much-needed leash (the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act), or enabling oligarchy (the Citizen's United decision), it's no wonder America enjoys the income inequality of a third world nation.

America's 745 billionaires saw their wealth increase by seventy-percent last year. Yes. You read that correctly: seventy percent. Mine didn't. And I'm guessing yours didn't, either. This teeny, tiny circle of billionaires are now worth more than the bottom sixty-percent of the U.S. population.

Does anyone see a problem here?

So while you and I struggle with inflation and skyrocketing energy costs, the wealthy accumulate their wealth with unprecedented rapidity—even beyond the late nineteenth-century heyday of the Industrial Age, when the tax-free fortunes of J.P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie were amassed.

And I'm sure some of them, like investor Leon Cooperman (profiled in a recent article in the Washington Post), are thoughtful folk with a sense of the world outside of their own. But it is my belief many more resemble Donald Trump, and are preening, arrogant, amoral ghouls whose selfishness and self-centeredness cannot be measured.

I also believe the overwhelming majority of them are Republicans, and are funding the party's headlong rush towards oligarchy and totalitarianism. (And while I'm at it, who but a blue-collar Republican would swallow the notion that it is Democrats who are the 'elites'?)

What are the consequences when there exists a group of people able to pay 132 million-dollars for a home? Or 500 million-dollars for an outsized yacht? Or even more to build a personal space craft?

How does that resonate through a society where an ever-increasing amount of people struggle to afford housing? Or send their kids to school? Or find enough work to keep food on the table? To what extent are our prices distorted by a billionaire's ability to endlessly consume?

More to the point, what are the effects of such outlandish amounts of money held in so few hands?

One consequence of our enabling an oligarchy is this: While our national infrastructure crumbles all around us, legislation to repair it sits idle because same would reverse a recent trillion-dollar giveaway to our wealthiest citizens and their businesses.  

Beyond that, there are the Republican efforts to gerrymander Democrats out of existence, erect still-more barriers to non-white-voters and their curious take on election reform.

Yeah. 

Once we're done with that voting and voice of the people crap, we can focus on the streamlined, exclusionary government our billionaires deserve! And a country by, for and of the rich! Just like God intended!

Deep breath. 

O.K. Back to Jeffrey and his boat. Given the enormous entitlements Republicans have extended to the uber wealthy, it wouldn't surprise me to learn they feel the bridge should be removed for Bezos' boat. Hey! Bezos doesn't live there! He paid for it! It's his right to build a boat too big for the local infrastructure to handle! Let them fix their own damn bridge!

On the sane and sober side of the aisle, I feel that as a person of unimaginable wealth, it would behoove him to be the bigger man and offer to not only pay for the bridge's deconstruction, but for its reconstruction as well.

Toss in some high-profile public improvements on his dime and we can call it a draw.

Which, going forward, is more than the ninety-nine percent will ever see from a Republican.

The Fair Tax Proposition

Here in Illinois, our governor is desperately seeking to stem the flow of red ink on state ledgers. One idea is to change the methodology used to compute our income taxes.

Illinois is one of just nine states to use what is called a flat tax. Under a flat tax, everyone pays the same percentage of their income to the state. So whether you're a struggling waitress who brought home eighteen-thousand or a professional athlete who made eighteen-million, each of you will forfeit 4.95% of your income to the state in income tax.

Governor Pritzker has proposed a 'fair tax'—an income tax with a sliding, income-based scale similar to that used by the federal government.

Predictably, Republicants loathe the idea on principle alone. But their attacks haven't ended there. As is their wont, oceans of misinformation are being distributed via any media capable of doing so.

And it's hardly a surprise that fear is weapon number-one. One hysterical ad alleges Pritzker's proposal will give Democrats new powers to levy taxes, even though the state legislature—composed of both Democrats and Republicants—already has that power.

I wonder if the Trump zombies even realize this. Probably not.

Furthermore, I'm wondering how many takes it took for the guy doing the voice-over to get through the script without soiling himself. I mean, he sounds profoundly and deeply perturbed.

Get some shut-eye, big guy!

Even more interesting than the fear-laden lies being disseminated over the airwaves is who is paying for them.

And guess what? It's the guys with the most to lose. The same guys Sir Lies-A-Lot gifted with a trillion-dollar tax break under the (cough) Tax Cuts and Jobs Act back in 2017. And not only did those guys get a big break on their personal taxes, but their businesses did as well.

Crazy Don not only sucked, he swallowed, too.

Ah. But I digress.

So after receiving this mountain of largesse, it must be a terrible shock to see one's tax bill threatening to swell rather than shrink. Don't we know who you are?

Illinois' most-prominent billionaire is a venture-fund capitalist by the name of Ken Griffin. He buys eight-figure penthouse properties like you and I do tube socks at Target. Which is another way to say yeah, he's loaded.

And to preserve that condition, Griffin is fighting tooth and nail against Pritzker's proposal. He'll tell you anything. Just don't let that proposal pass!

Now, if the fair tax proposal weren't aimed (as Pritzker claims) at the one-percent, why is Griffin pouring fifty-five million dollars of his own money into an effort to stop this thing?

Is he worried about our taxes? Nah. The folk who have essentially bought our government and steered a bevy of billionaire-friendly legislation through it have shown repeatedly they aren't terribly concerned about us. We're just profit-sucking rabble.

Nope. They're worried about staying rich and powerful. And getting richer. And more-powerful.

While I see the truth in Griffin's frenzied spending, I'm betting Illinois Republicants only see the threat of a tax increase and go into the same kind of lockstep stupor they do when they hear the words 'gun control' and will vote en masse to derail this.

Even if the only people affected are people far wealthier than themselves.

And battered, tax-fatigued Democrats may well do the same.

Out of all of this comes a strange and somewhat sickening realization. In our unthinking and knee-jerk distrust of politicians we unwittingly caress the hand crushing our larynx.

When you vote 'no' on the Fair Tax proposition, don't forget to raise a fist and shout “Save the billionaires!”

Truth.

Random Thoughts, Vol. 13

After another divisive year where seemingly every public opinion is split right down the middle, I think we can all agree today is the final day of 2019.

So I'll take this opportunity to wish everyone a Happy New Year.

And pray we find more commonality next year than we did in this one. 

Is it okay to eat dark chocolate with the lights on?

As a man with a wife, do I get special commendation for even thinking of moving to a place called Romeoville?

If Donald Trump has a favorite football team, is has to be the New England Patriots. Spygate? Deflategate? Filming-the-opposition-from-the-press-box gate? Yep. These guys are as crooked as he is.

What I want to know is how you get your money back from California Psychics by denying theirs was the best reading you've ever had. I mean, they're psychics, right?

I'm still trying to figure out how I lost the government's name-a-dam contest. I'm telling you, God is an awesome name for a dam!

In a zero-tolerance society like ours, how is it we continue to tolerate Donald Trump?

With 210 episodes of Everybody Loves Raymond from which to choose, how is it my cable station can only rotate the same three-dozen week after week after week?

I will submit once again that the more-irritating the driver either directly in front of or directly behind you, the more-likely they're headed to the same destination you are.

Many people criticize Donald Trump for his insensitivity to minorities. To which I counter hey—ever heard of the one-percent?

Be as unbiased as death.

Dear Whiny Republican

Yes. We Democrats hate Donald Trump.

We hated him when he won an election engineered by Republican gerrymandering. 

We hated him when his childish and towering insecurity first reared its ugly head via an indefensible proclamation that more people showed up for his inauguration than Barack Obama's.

We hated him when he refused to share his tax returns. Being possessed of functioning brains, we knew what that meant. And still do.

(Which I hasten to point out, differentiates us from you.)

We hated him when he gave lip service to our men in uniform and then pissed all over a Gold Star mother because her son had brown skin.

We hated him when he mimicked a disabled child at one of his campaign rallies like the puerile middle-school bully he is. And then had the audacity to complain about satirical portrayals of himself and call them mean-spirited.

Seriously? 

We hated him when he neutered the Environmental Protection Agency for the benefit of our corporate parasites, endangering every man, woman and child on Earth in the process.

We hated him when he authored a trillion-dollar giveaway to the one-percent and Google and Exxon and Amazon and Wal-Mart. And we hated him when we realized corporate giants were paying income tax at half the rate of working Americans.

We hated him when he spat on America's allies and embraced our enemies. 

We hated him when he was found to have defrauded would-be students under the ageis of (don't laugh) Trump University.

(You want a world-class oxymoron? There it is.)

We hated him when he was found to have looted his own charity.

And we hated him when he arrogantly and capriciously put the security of domestic elections at risk by soliciting the help of a foreign government to dig up dirt on a presumed opponent in exchange for foreign aid.

Democrats did not provoke this impeachment. Our dislike and derision didn't place a phone call to Ukraine last July. Donald Trump did that all by himself.

Can I assume you're familiar with the expression 'give a man enough rope and he'll hang himself'?

Whine and cry about how Democrats have wanted this since November 8, 2016. You're right. You are so damn fucking right. Hate us for knowing in advance what an incompetent, venal, selfish, toxic bag of shit Donald Trump was going to be as president.

THAT'S WHY WE DIDN'T VOTE FOR HIM!!!

Do you retards get that???

I'm so sorry you're Republican. Like sheep returning from pasture, you know only how to follow the asshole in front of you.

Worse still are his enablers. The spineless, gutless cowards in the House and Senate. Their reflexive, unthinking support of this destructive and dangerous demagogue should have them in front of a firing squad. 

God willing, the political equivalent will present itself next November.

Voodoo and the Businessman Sleight of Hand

President Petulant likes to crow about his roaring economy, even though it has its origins in Barack Obama's first term. Confronted with this fact, the Trump-whore would no doubt maintain he was in fact Obama's economic advisor.

Or something like that.

Has Hollywood has ever imagined a reboot of Forrest Gump, with dick-swinging Donald as the driving force of virtually every important moment in (revisionist) American history? You know, composing his own take on the Gettysburg Address ("A country of the wealthy, by the wealthy and for the wealthy..."), leading the Confederacy to victory in the Civil War and subduing Hitler and Tojo via Twitter taunts? 

Okay. So I keep my ears peeled for the roar, but I'm having trouble hearing it. Oh, I know the one-percent are gobbling up historic amounts of global and domestic wealth, aided and abetted by the Trump-whore's tax-cut-slash-bribe.

But what of the 99%?

I'll admit we're a bunch of lazy, shiftless slobs unworthy of anything but the barest solvency, but where's the roar in our economy?

The gig economy, in which people work several jobs to make ends meet, is alive and well. Contract employee by day, Lyft operator by night. While the stagnant wages that earmarked the days of the early-recovery have technically disappeared, increases are curiously low for an economy reportedly firing on all cylinders.

In a report recently released by the Associated Press, raises for executives at Fortune 500 companies averaged seven-percent, as opposed to just three-percent for rank and file employees. Elsewhere, raises for wee folk were a bit higher—3.4%—still low for an economy with record-low levels of unemployment.

During the boom of the nineteen-nineties, desperate employers were offering raises of up to 5% (not to mention signing bonuses and other incentives) to retain and hire badly-needed employees.

Something has changed.

The business class likes to cite the incredible pressure wrought by online and international competition as the reason for these smaller raises. Strangely, those stressors don't seem to have the same effect on executive compensation.

I wonder why?

Another curious aspect of our roaring economy is that a record seven-million Americans are more than three months behind on their car payments. That is more than were behind in the dark days of 2009 and 2010.

Republicans would no doubt explain this as the unfortunate result of stupid, ignorant minorities unable to budget their money. But think about it: how critical is your car to your job? Are you telling me people voluntarily put their jobs at risk in favor of a new plasma TV?

Or is there something else going on?

With employers picking up less and less of their employee's health care costs, paychecks are stretched further still. Add the skyrocketing cost of even garden-variety prescription drugs and you can practically see them evaporate.

And if you're a contract employee, well, you don't have any healthcare benefits, do you? 

But not to worry, because Big Pharma assures us very few consumers pay list price for their prescriptions drugs, and low-cost alternatives are available everywhere. Plus Republicans continue to maintain they're working on the best healthcare package ever!

We at The Square Peg have made this point before, but none of this just "happened”. It is deliberate. On purpose. And by design. It is the result of decades of business-inspired, Republican-enabled greed.

Furious with the mounting power of labor unions and the minimum wages of American workers, business sought cheaper sources of labor. Ever-cheaper raw materials and methods of production and distribution. They wanted to make more money.

You and your job? They were standing in their way.

Did you even say you were sorry?

While we might be guilty of over-simplification, America essentially sold its soul to China in exchange for bigger profits. Our Republican-enabled corporate behemoths gave away our nation's manufacturing base so that its executives could receive bigger bonuses.

So much of what you see around you is the fallout from that shift. And now in the midst of his re-election campaign, the Trump-whore wants to put the genie back in the bottle. 

Ha. Ha.

So yes. We have a roaring economy. Sad thing is, ninety-nine percent of us have been fitted with noise-cancelling headphones.

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act

Twenty-some years ago, conservatives were fond of using the phrase “transfer of wealth” to scare the Republican base into voting lest the country be overrun with poor people driving Italian sports cars and buying homes in affluent suburbs.

So it is ironic, then, that our current infestation of Republicans is presiding over that which they wielded as a threat all those years ago.

The latest installment of their ongoing effort to hand the country over to the one-percent is their tax reform, a hastily-written proposal composed in shadow to keep we the people from seeing it for the outrage it is. 

(But not to worry. I have it on good authority that the half-eaten bag of Doritos in your kitchen and that basket of dirty laundry are, for the moment, safe.)

First off is the nearly fifty-percent reduction in the corporate tax rate.

Anyone with even the faintest knowledge of corporate America knows businesses routinely employ armies of tax attorneys to reduce their tax burden. And they succeed, wildly. No company able to keep its head outside its rectum pays the listed rate—none.

This reduction has the added benefit of relieving corporations of that need to keep tax attorneys around, which come to think of it must be frightfully expensive. *sniff*

To further assuage our put-upon corporations, they will be allowed to repatriate their offshore cash reserves to the U.S. at a suggested tax rate of just 10%. To ensure they aren't too inconvenienced by our largesse, they have eight years to pay up. 

To those of you made inconsolable by our immigration policy, which seemingly rewards illegal aliens for not getting caught, please explain to me in excruciating detail how this is different. It is certainly interesting that our pillars of pilferage sit on historic amounts of cash—even despite the strangulating regulation forced upon them by the big, bad—and presumably liberal—government.

Someone is getting screwed, and it doesn't appear to be the folks with the mountain of offshore tender, does it? 

But the biggest, most-lavishly-wrapped gift is a change in the methodology of taxation. Our beleaguered corporations are no longer required to report overseas income, the likely outcome of which will be said cash returning to these shores virtually untaxed.

If the facts aren't horrific enough, Trump's stooges are actually attempting to sell this tax bill as a stimulus package. It's right there in the title: Tax Cuts & Jobs Act. Citizens of a certain age will recognize it as the Reagan Administration's trickle-down theory of economics.

You will be excused for proffering tart and unappreciative comments such as “Hey! It didn't work then, so maybe it won't work now, either!” 

As a twentieth-century wit once noted “Republicans are people who believe nothing should be done for the first time.”

Donald? Mitch? Paul? I'm pretty stupid. But I'm not vote Republican stupid.

Granted, your tax overhaul gives middle Americans a break in the same sense that—technically—I'm employed. But I shouldn't ever confuse 'employed' with 'self-supporting'.

Non-partisan summations universally conclude that middle-America's cut is not only faint, it's also temporary. By contrast, the parasite class receives cuts that are deep and full and also—to quote Trump's stooges—permanent.

If our homegrown corporations didn't routinely exhibit the venal and self-serving behavior they dismiss their employees for, I might actually be inclined to believe the money they save will fund infrastructure investment and job growth.

But we all know where it's going, don't we?

And we haven't event touched on the ugliness of how these cuts are going to be paid for.

To compensate for lost revenue, Republicans will be forced to reduce costs. They will also want to avoid being seen as growing the deficit, which this bill does—in spades. And I'm guessing oil company subsidies aren't on the table.

More likely, frivolities like Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security will be.

The many will fund the few.

The most contentious, immature, hostile and sociopathic president in American history will oversee the most draconian tax reform in memory.

But like the suspense thriller with multiple red-herring endings, this show ain't over. Not yet.

There is one final indignity.

We must listen to the fortunate son, the spoiled, petulant, ungrateful recipient of an undue amount of life's blessings inform us that he is screwing himself because, as our president, he has discovered a higher calling.

Even higher than grabbing women by their pus... well, never mind.

Yes, his accountants are “going crazy” as Donald inexplicably directs his chauffeur to the poor house because the Republicant tax reform is going to break him.

(Do the room temperature IQs who voted for this cretin really believe this shit?)

I know of a waitress who posts regularly on Facebook. After Trump's election, she ardently, stridently and obnoxiously announced that “America got its balls back.”

Pity those selfsame balls will soon be slapping her on the chin.

Irony Strikes

It’s a great time to be a 'have' in America. Even better than normal, I mean.

Despite budget-cuts and a nation-wide dollar shortage, the gold coins falling into their pile continue to accumulate. Meanwhile, those in the pile of the have-nots continue to disappear. It's a fact that America’s income disparity now resembles that of a third-world nation.

Remarkably, this dynamic also applies to union membership, where lavish pensions and recession-defying raises are the norm for haves, while the nots watch a bitter stream of concessions and pay-cuts erode what were once self-sustaining livelihoods.

What does it mean when even our unions—once bastions of hope for America’s labor against the absolute power of corporate ownership—have succumbed to this exclusionary and destructive trend?

I’m confused how this is supposed to revitalize our much-talked about manufacturing base. About how this is supposed to draw the best and the brightest and reverse the brain drain I hear so many industries complaining about.

I’m concerned because I know what serfs are. And what feudalism is. And the degree to which the twentieth-century is increasingly appearing as an anomaly and not a societal model. This resonates with me because I’ve lived it.

As a former sales and service consultant for one of the baby bells spun-off in the wake of the anti-trust litigation brought against AT&T, I watched in shock and horror as my union rolled over for the labor-hating victor of a hostile takeover:

Can we fluff your pillow for you, Mr. Nacchio? Freshen your drink? Exactly how far would you like us to bend over, Mr. Nacchio?

There was no fight. There were no negotiations. To my knowledge, not a single attempt was made to bash in Joseph P. Nacchio’s head with a brick. (Which isn’t to infer that I endorse workplace violence.)

Our jobs were radically reconfigured to ensure failure.

I can confirm with absolute certainty that sales goals require sales calls. While statistically conceivable, calls from angry customers who have taken a third day off of work for a technician that never shows do not generate much in the way of commission.

But they do make it very easy to dismiss a floor full of sales reps for non-performance.

So yes. I’m jealous of any union that not only remains functional, but powerful.

And that jealousy turns to something much warmer when it becomes apparent that the only unions remaining powerful are those representing the well-off. I mean, do Kobe Bryant and Albert Pujols really need union-backed protection?

The answer is no. Or rather, hell no.

Beyond the finger-pointing and the politicking and the nostalgia, the fact remains that America was strongest when its middle-class was largest. And in a consumer-based economy, why don’t you want the most money in the pockets of the most people?

Seems like a no-brainer. A win-win.

But what the hell do I know?