Why Is Romney Running and Who Should Vote for Him?

The first question we could be asking is why is Romney running to be President of the United States? It’s not the money.  Romney makes more than $20 million a year without lifting a finger. He surely doesn’t need the $400,000 a year salary that goes with the job.  He does not need to live in the White House because he has many fine homes and with his net worth at about a quarter of a billion dollars, he could live anywhere he wants.

He surely has no ideology or plan to help our country. He has suggested no plan for tax reform other than making the rich richer and the poor poorer.  His plans for the military is to increase it to equal a certain percent of the GNP, regardless of our defensive needs.  He has no plans for increasing hiring or for reducing the number of home foreclosures.

He has no national political experience and worked in government for only four years.  When he left the governor’s office he had all evidence of his time there removed from computers and file cabinets.  When he left office, his state was number 47 out of 50 states in job creation.  He introduced health care reform which was the model for the Affordable Care Act, but now is against it even though it has been one of his few successes.

He says that he is the man for the job because he has 25 years of business experience but he doesn’t want us to know what that experience really was.  It appears that his company got into buying struggling companies, borrowing large amounts to pay for them, shrinking their work force and benefits, taking large commissions and then letting them go bankrupt.  This does not create jobs.  Many of the jobs his firm did create were in China and India by outsourcing the work.

He wants to reduce taxes on the rich but won’t share his tax returns with the public. The one year’s return he did reveal showed that he had much of his wealth offshore and in Swiss bank accounts to avoid paying taxes himself while not using his wealth to create jobs in America.

He calls himself severely conservative which means that he is against gay marriage,  abortion and unions. But when he was in government he said that he was in favor of those social issues.

So why is he running?  Why was McCain running when he too had no need of the money having married well the second time.  I think it was for the same reason and might have even been George W.’s reason for running.

They were competing with their fathers. 

George W,’s father was a war hero, a member of Congress, head of the CIA, Vice President and President of the United States.  George W. joined the Air Force reserves to avoid battle and then was AWOL at that.  He was a failed businessman and sports team owner.  He had problems with substance abuse.  He then became a successful governor and ran for President like his father had done.  He had twice as many terms as his dad, but almost destroyed the country in the process.

John McCain's father and grandfather were both four star admirals in the Navy.  John had less than one year of combat experience flying planes in Viet Nam.  He was captured and held as a POW for five terrible years.  He realized soon that his military career would never equal his father’s.  He remarried well, marrying a rich heiress whose father helped John get into Arizona politics. But being rich and a senator was not equal to a four star admiral, but being President, Commander-in-Chief, would trump old dad. The admiral is still ahead on points.

Mitt Romney's father had been head of an American car company and governor of Michigan.  He was a contender for the Republican nomination for President even though he was a Mormon and was born in Mexico, coming to America at age five.  His son Mitt got into and through high school, college and graduate school because of his father and was then given a moneymaking business to run soon after school.  He made a lot of money at Bain capital outsourcing jobs, reducing payrolls and benefits and sometimes, bankrupting the affected companies.  He was governor of Massachusetts for one term.  But still had not equalled his father.  Becoming President would surpass his father.  The essence of Romney is competition and who better to beat than his own father?

I have come to realize, after talking about this to a friend, that the result of these three men trying to compete with their fathers, is that none ended up doing what they would have really wanted to be or for which they were best suited .

That explains why Romney seems so uncomfortable in the political arena.  His father wanted to be President but failed so if Mitt runs he wins.  But Mitt could have been great at something meaningful.  With his looks and little passion, he could have been a matinee idol. He could have been a successful male model.  He could have been the Marlboro man.

The same with the other two.

John McCain got into, attended and graduated from Annapolis, paid for completely by taxpayer dollars, only because of his father and his father's father.  He was the second worst student in his graduating class, perhaps just ahead of Oliver North.  He apparently didn't like it and had no talent for it.  With his charm and good looks, he could have been a business major at some state school and become a successful salesman, actor or male model.  He could have worked in his second wife's liquor business as sales manager.

George Bush also was accepted into, attended and graduated from his father's alma mater because of his father.  He became a pilot, like his father but did it in the reserves and after a while stopped going on required flights.  He went into business like his father and failed terribly.  He went into politics, like his father, and did pretty well, but it was in Texas. He ran for President as his father had and we know what happened.  He hated the job but he did beat his father, he had two terms to Dad's one.  He could have pursued a vocation that he actually enjoyed and had some talent for.  He too was an attractive and charming guy who like McCain was not very bright.  He would also have been great at sales.  He had great people skills.

Unfortunately, all three men wasted their talents and happiness trying to compete instead of being who they really were.  This is probably most painfully true about Mitt.


The next question is: who should vote for Mitt Romney?  First, they must be Republican - 24% of the electorate.  Being Republican also means being white and Christian.  A recent study found that 90% of Republicans are white and 90% are Christian.  The other 10% either didn’t understand the question or just don’t understand what their best interests are. Besides being a white Christian Republican ( a redundancy), they should also be rich, at least in the top two percent of family income, receiving more than $250,000 a year because if reelected, President Obama will raise their taxes while Romney might even lower them.  But they have to be aware that lowering taxes on the rich in 2001 and 2003 helped create the economic disaster from which we are currently recovering.  If taxes are lowered even more for the rich, regulations loosened and military spending increased our deficit will grow even more rapidly putting even the rich at risk of losing money, customers and stock value.

Other potential Romney voters might be white Christian Republicans who are not in the top 2% of income recipients but hold very strong cultural values.  Some, like the evangelicals, love their Savior and hate gays, blacks, Jews, Muslims and foreigners in His name.  They feel compelled to vote against the President even if it makes them suffer more economically affected by the service program cuts that have been promised by candidate Romney.  These evangelicals might even believe that Mormons are not Christians, but prefer them to what they perceive as a black, Muslim, socialist, pro-gay, pro-abortion and anti-gun foreigner (Kenyan or Hawaiian) President. 

And of course every Mormon and everyone who contributes to Fox “news” is duty bound to vote for challenger Romney.

I think that that covers all the likely Romney voters.

That means that if you are not white or Christian or very rich, you shouldn’t vote for the challenger unless you care nothing about your own or your country’s best interests. If you are a member of a union, work for the government, need health care coverage, are against the U.S. military build up, are in favor of women’s reproductive rights, approve of gay unions, care about the poor, want to avoid saber rattling that could lead us into war with Iran, Syria, North Korea or Yemen, care about the environment, believe in voter’s rights, want to be able to look forward to receiving Social Security and Medicare benefits in the future and/or think that gun violence has gone too far, should and must vote to reelect the President.  “Should” because it would be in your best interest as well as the nation’s and “must” because every vote counts.

Taming the Human Nature

It has been painful watching the T.V. news.  Disregarding the sensationalized or superficially reported stories, many well researched reports can be very depressing commentaries on the state of human nature.   

But now we hear daily of atrocities humans are subjecting others to.  The primary victims are girls and women who are mistreated by their families, husbands, government officials and brutal savages whose life’s goal is destruction for domination.  Recent articles about mistreatment of women in Muslim countries cite mutilation, humiliation, rape, murder and every possible kind of desecration.  But there is so much more.  There are terrorists blowing themselves up trying to take as many innocent lives with them.  There are business people who cheat their customers, husbands who lie to and cheat on their wives, criminals who violate our laws of decency, the abuse of animals in bullfights, in the jungle, at sea and in overcrowded chicken coops.  We wage wars that kill and maim and write laws that are cruel and inhumane.  Even our religions betray us with shallow theologies and divisiveness leading to intolerance and violence.

Our human nature must be tamed, but how?  Creating cultures and civilizations with laws and philosophies that foster good will have been our way of taming our nature, but even they have failed us leading to greater conflict.  What can we create that can bring out our good qualities and make the disruptive ones seem out of place?  What have we created for this purpose as well as for many others?

There is one that I can think of.  It took thousands of years, at least 15,000 by some counts, but Man has worked hand in hand with nature to produce a remedy to free our better selves.  We created the modern dog.

It turns out that it doesn’t take long to turn a fox, wolf or coyote into a dog.  By mating the most docile member of a litter with another, these species become doglike in three generations.  Remember, for them one generation can be just a few years.  By breeding just for temperament, the offspring change their fur color, their size, shape and their nature.  They become domesticated.

But how does taming their wild nature help humans tame theirs? 

From their beginning we have needed dogs to help us in our daily lives.  When humans were still hunters and gatherers, dogs helped us find our prey and sometimes helped us capture or retrieve them.  They helped us when we started raising our own food by herding our livestock and protecting our lives and property.  Today, dogs are used to find bombs, identify disease, help the blind walk and bring comfort to the elderly and disabled.  But most of all, dogs give us love, unconditional love.

Dogs are not judgmental.  They don’t respond to people based on physical appearance, financial status, political point of view or social status. Their unconditional love resonates deep within us to ignite the unconditional love that is at the heart of our very nature and temporarily suspends our fear, which is also at our core.

Scientists have now found a physiological expression for this apparent canine gift.  They have found that when humans pet their dogs it increases the level of oxytocin in both.  Oxytocin is the same chemical that is produced when a mother nurses her baby and feels a bonding.  The oxytocin is the bonding glue.  Oxytocin levels are also elevated during intimate human interaction leading to its orgasmic conclusion.  Oxytocin in our system makes us open and trusting while the testosterone in us is a counterbalance making us also somewhat leery and aggressive. People with high levels of the former and low ones of the latter tend to be very trusting, easy targets for conmen and charlatans.

But dogs are not intent on tricking us.  They want their basic necessities met - enough food, water and opportunities to eliminate waste products - and beyond them, the only goal is love and joy.

There are now more than 100 million dogs.  There are some 150,000 dogs in San Francisco, more than the number of the city’s children. Dogs come in more varieties than do any other species and range in size more than any other.  A mature dog can weigh anywhere from barely two pounds to over 200.  So in the same species a dog can be 100 times the size of  another.  Can you imagine if some adult humans were 100 times the size of other adults?

Dogs are the rare living creatures that were created by Man.  We started more than 15,000 years ago the process of making dogs to serve our individual needs.  There are hunting dogs that point to the prey and retrieve them when they are killed or who look for animals or people to capture.  There are herding dogs who take care of our livestock be they sheep or cattle.  There are dogs that hunt rodents like gophers, mice and rats.  There even is a dog, the Kings Charles Cavalier spaniel, created to sit on the king’s lap and attract the fleas away from the royal.  There are dogs that offer protection, those who are small enough to be carried everywhere, those who can help the blind find their way and even those who bark the whole time their master is gone.  There are dogs that can find bombs, drugs or even disease.

Some anthropologists believe that Man could not have survived without dogs.

But their gift goes much deeper than function.  Dogs make humans better.  They make us kinder, more compassionate, more considerate, more secure, less lonely, more loved and needed and more open to others dogs and their companions.  Dogs break up many of our artificial cultural barriers.  They make us better people by taming our nature with unconditional love and affection.

But there is one thing wrong with dogs: they get old, suffer and die.  Dogs, like all finite things, have a beginning and an end.  The beginning is the cause for great joy.  The end is cause for unbearable sorrow.  It is the death of the innocent.  The constant reminder of the cruelty of nature’s entropy.

Whom Do You Trust?

                           
When I was going to school on the west side of Manhattan I used to get free tickets to see a new show broadcast just down the block.  The name of the show was “Who Do You Trust?” and was hosted by a young man from the midwest named Johnny Carson.  He later replaced a future Westchester neighbor of mine named Jack Paar on another show called “ The Tonight Show.”

I don’t remember what the quiz show was like anymore but do remember the incorrect grammar of it, “Who” instead of “Whom.”

But now the question arises in my mind on a more frequent basis.  Whom or who do I trust?  Whom should I trust?

We always trusted our priests.  They were holy and only did good.  Now we know that there have been many abuses of young parishioners and realize that though the mass media has never mentioned this, that this has probably been going on for centuries. And what made matters worse was that those on top of the church hierarchy covered up the crimes making more people subject to abuse.  Our evangelical leaders faired no better, not able to resist the sexual relations they preached against. And let us not forget the mullahs who preach hatred and violence to foster their campaign of the subjugation of women, their apparent raison d’etre. Should or can we trust our religious leaders?

What about teachers?  Can we trust them with our children?  Again we hear of cases of abuse of children by teachers, religious and lay (excuse the expression).  It also turns out that some are not competent but are kept on because they have tenure just like the abusive priests.  In some more primitive states, teachers want to teach Genesis instead of evolution to their students who yearn to know how we got here.  When our first black President made a presentation to students, early in his term, some teachers would not let their students watch the black, Muslim, communist, socialist president, as they saw him. Can we trust such people with our kids and with the nation’s education?

What about our bankers and financiers?  Can we trust them?  If you had money in Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo or now Barclay’s, you have probably realized that you cannot trust them to put your welfare above or on a par with their own interests.  They actually admitted it to a congressional committee trying to find out what caused the financial crash of ’08. Companies like Goldman Sachs knowingly bundled bad loans and sold them to their own clients while actually betting against them at the same time.  Why would anyone continue to do business with such companies, companies they can no longer trust?

But surely we can trust our doctors.  They go to school for eight years taking only math and science courses then intern for a year or two, then residence for another few years and then become fellows for a few more.  They are usually well into their 30s before they see us as regular patients.  Surely we can trust them. Now we learn that their are at least 100,000 deaths a year due to hospital error. Every night on the national news we learn that the doctors were wrong about something else and that we should stop doing what they told us to do.  The drugs they offered women to prevent problems with their bones, only work for five years after which they actually cause bones to break.  Aspirin was recommended for everyone to avoid stroke, heart attacks and even cancer, now has been found to present too many other health risks and should be used only by people with known heart problems. Then there are mammograms, MRIs, x-rays all thought mainly beneficial now found to cause to potentially life threatening problems if overdone. And for men using a drug to make their hair grow back so that they are more attractive to the opposite sex we learn that they can lose their willingness or ability to have sex with their newfound intimates. We spend more on medicine than any other developed country and yet have some of the worst results.  Can we trust our physicians?

But what about our free press, blessed by our very first amendment to the Constitution, surely we can trust them to give the information we need, or can we? Not only has our mass media been characterized as sensationalist and shallow or just inaccurate, it can also be biased.  The most glaring example, besides all of Fox “news,” recently was the media’s presentation of a shooting in Florida.  A neighborhood watch volunteer overstepped his responsibility and took on a 17 year-old football player late at night.  The media wanting a conviction deleted part of the 911 tape to make the shooter sound racist and then showed the wrong picture of the volunteer making him look like a large Mexican drug dealer in what appeared to be prison garb.  After finding out that the defendant looked nothing like that now, if he ever did, they continued to show the old picture.  The correct picture showed a slight man who looked more like an intellectual than a drug lord.  They showed a picture of the 17 year-old victim as he looked when he was 12.  Anyone looking at it should have known that this was not what the victim looked like.  He was at least 6 feet tall, tattooed and with an attitude reflected in a current picture of himself giving the finger with both hands, showing he was ambidextrous, a double threat.  It now appears that the victim attacked and beat the volunteer who was afraid for his life and shot the boy at close range to protect himself.  It took months for the media to show us pictures taken at the night of the event showing that the shooter had a broken nose and the back of his head was all bloody.  This is not to say that the shooter is innocent. It is only to say that the media conspired to convict him with inaccurate reporting.

After the long awaited Supreme Court decision that took over three months to write and was released on the last possible day, two stations got the decision wrong because they didn’t read past page one.  The media has become more of the stenographer of canned answers than the source of probing, challenging questions, a la Edward R. Morrow and Mike Wallace.

But we can surely trust the Supreme Court.  These nine justices are the best our society can produce.  They each have long careers practicing the law.  But we now have one who has never asked a question, has rarely written the majority or minority opinion, and has always sided with his partisans.  We have at least two others that are so far to the right that you know exactly how they will rule in each case - if it involves big business, big business wins -corporations are people aren’t they? The Supreme Court decided to hear the 2000 election issue involving Florida’s accuracy problems during the vote count.  The Democrats wanted a recount.  The Republicans wanted the inaccurate results to stand after their candidate’s brother, the state’s governor,  had worked so hard to falsify them. The court ruled along party lines giving America one of the worst presidencies in our history, one that left the country on the verge of bankruptcy and involved in two unnecessary wars costing more than 100,000 lives and trillions of tax dollars.  This same court then went on to allow unlimited campaign financing by super PACS arguing that corporations are people and have first amendment rights to free speech through financial contributions.  The justices felt that if any private campaign financing was destroying our democracy, increasing it would help expedite the deterioration.  Can we trust these esteemed jurors?

But at least we have our elected officials.  The core of our great nation’s democracy is representative government through free and open elections.  American citizens can vote for and elect the person whom they feel best represents their interests. We have 535 congress people representing our best interests.  Or are they?  Currently only nine percent of our people trust the Congress.  You can only wonder who these nine per cent are.  It has become painfully clear that the Republicans have done everything they could think of to thwart the President’s attempts at improving our conditions after the previous administration’s train wreck declaring that their primary objective is to deny the President a second term not to fix our economy. It has also come to light that many of these legislators were also on the take.  Some bought or sold stocks based on inside legislative information.  Others accepted favors from corporations like free golf trips to Scotland on private corporate jets in exchange for favorable legislation.  Still others allowed lobbyists to actually write legislation favorable to their efforts.  The only word that comes to mind to describe such people is a five letter unmentionable name which begins with the letter “W” and is usually attributed to pliers of the second oldest profession.  Using this term for legislators is an insult to their namesakes.  Not even congress people trust congress people and they should know.

So who or whom does that leave?  We can hopefully trust our family and friends, much of the time except when too much money is at stake.  We can trust our instincts if they are counterbalanced with clear thinking and honest observation.

We can trust the exceptions to all these groups.

There are some wonderful religious leaders in every religion with great faith and wisdom.

There are also a number of important educators who do their best to help their students see the truths about the world around them.

There are even some honest bankers and financiers who put their clients first, give generously to charity and want to make this a better country.

Our doctors have saved countless lives with skilled and innovative surgery and/or the prescription of appropriate medication.  They are on the front lines fighting cancer, heart disease and the other medical causes of our suffering.  This very column would not exist if not for excellent surgeons who have performed numerous life-saving operations on behalf of its writer.

There have also been courageous reporters like Morrow and Wallace but also Russert, Chronkite, Brinkley, Lehr, McNeil, Fareed Zakaria and even Anderson Cooper.  There are also excellent and beautiful ones like Nora O’Donnell, Mika Brzezinski, Savannah Guthrie, Kelley O’Donnell, Ann Notarangelo, Sharyn Alfonsi and Laura Logan, to name a few.  I find that PBS can usually be relied upon for accurate and in depth reporting and can always find at least five very dry jokes in every evening broadcast of Brian William’s NBC news show.

When it comes to the Supreme Court and our Congress, it seems hard to trust those on the right who are clearly in the wrong.  The right wing partisanship has soured these institutions which used to be deserving of the highest respect. But even some on the other side of the aisle have been guilty of accepting favors in return for some of their own at the public’s expense.  But even with these groups there are a few great souls doing the good work.  Our current president might be the best example of that.  Surely, there are congress people who truly love their country and try to work cooperatively to improve the lives of our people. However, no name comes to mind.

And when all else fails, you can trust this column to bring you ideas whose author truly believes will be of benefit to the you.  Trust me. Whom else can you trust?

What Could Be Goals for the Second Term -

Our President will be given four more years to reshape our country, what will or, rather, should he do?  He has already saved the U.S. economy, passed a sweeping financial reform, saved the American auto industry from ruin, ended “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” crafted the Affordable Care Act, almost as sweeping as well Medicare when introduced, gotten us out of Iraq and has begun an effort to improve our public education system.

What should he do in his next term?  Here’s what I would like to see:

Reduce the annual and accumulated national budget deficit by changing the tax code; reducing our foreign military presence; eliminating waste and fraud in government programs; eliminating, combining and reducing government agencies; changing our immigration criteria; and discouraging the outsourcing of American jobs while encouraging the creation of millions of new American employment opportunities and creating a broader tax base.

 Changing our federal income tax code for individuals by eliminating all itemized deductions (not including the self employed) and credits with only a standard deduction; considering all sources of income equally including capital gains, dividends, Social Security benefit payments, net earned income (subtracting only the FICA), food stamps, unemployment insurance payments etc.; and with only five tax brackets ranging from 10% to 35%.

 Reducing our foreign military presence by closing many of our more than 700 foreign military bases especially in Europe and the Middle East. Remove all troops from Afghanistan as quickly as possible and give up on trying to create a new country there.  We should also reevaluate our foreign aid and give it only to the most deserving on a very short term basis.

 Eliminating, combining and /or reducing government agencies after determining what functions are now being done and which are either duplications of other efforts or have no impact on goals and objectives.  Could the Dept. of Education by recombined with Health and Human Services, formerly know as Health, Education and Welfare?  Could the Dept. of Energy be part of Interior?  Could the many Homeland Security agencies be combined and eliminated?  How many federally-funded think tanks do we really need? And we can eliminate most travel for training or conferences by government officials and workers.  Should we still produce pennies and nickels when they are not even worth the cost of making them? Should any law enforcement resources be wasted on marijuana when it is more beneficial and less harmful than alcohol or cigarettes, which are considered legal?

 Changing our immigration criteria by accepting applicants who have something to offer in terms of talent or skills and not inviting the poorest and neediest to our shores or people who are related to someone already here. We have tens of millions of Americans who are poor and needy, let us help them before adding to the problem.  Those here illegally should be encouraged to return to their beloved homeland.  All employers should check all their employees‘ status by running an EVerify on them. 

 Discouraging outsourcing by eliminating all incentives for it and by creating disincentives making hiring Americans more cost effective.
  
Secure the future of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security benefits for the aged and disabled by raising the salary ceiling for payroll tax deductions and making Americans healthier through improved education, nutrition and exercise, thus preventing the onset of serious and costly illnesses like heart failure, cancer, diabetes and kidney failure. Currently, ten percent of our people account for 67% of all medical costs (five percent account for half of all medical costs).  Let us focus on that 10% while keeping the other 90% from joining them. Reduce or eliminate waste and fraud which costs hundreds of billions of dollars each year.

Dramatically improve public education to ensure that every child can have an excellent elementary and high school experience which will produce an adult who can read, write and speak our language correctly; who can do math at least up to algebra - able to easily add, subtract, multiply and divide numbers; who understands how our government works as well as the world’s geography; who can relate to science and its methodology; and who can think critically by analyzing available information and coming to rational conclusions. Make junior colleges free reducing the cost of education and letting those who want a bachelor's degree only need two more yesrs at a four year college.

Reform politics by ending campaign contributions making all local, state and federal elections shorter, issue oriented and consisting mainly of public debates and interviews for the candidates. This will end the influence peddling that currently goes on and will keep the rich from buying elections.  It will also end bribery disguised as lobbying.  Lobbying would consist only of presenting the special interests’ positions on pending legislation - positions based on actual facts and figures organized in a logical argument.

If President Obama can accomplish these changes in his second term,  I think he will be known as one of our country’s greatest presidents and we will begin a neutopia.

A Simple and Fair Federal Income Tax

America is in the midst of an economic crisis. We have a federal debt in excess of $20 trillion dollars, we are running annual deficits of more than a half trillion dollars, we have 13 million people out of work, 50 million people on food stamps and one in five of our children lives in poverty.  While job creation is essential, so is reducing the annual deficit by cutting unnecessary federal spending and by raising revenue.

Studies have found that the richest Americans are paying at an average rate of only 17%  for their annual federal income tax and that half of American households pay no federal or state income tax at all.

There has been much discussion about changing the tax code to make it simpler and more fair.  Conservatives want a flat tax with everyone paying the same rate.  They want to reduce the highest rate while expanding the base, meaning that more people would be paying taxes while the richest pay less than they already are.  The last time tax rates were lowered in favor of the wealthiest Americans, under the Bush/Cheney administration, the result was no new jobs,  record deficits, a Wall Street crash and the tattered economy we are now suffering.

I have a recommendation that would simplify the federal and therefore the state income tax code for individuals and couples, not including the self-employed.  My plan would be very simple, fair, and would raise at much as $100 billion a year in new revenues.  This figure could be adjusted as can be the recommended tax brackets and standard deductions.

Under this plan taxes would have one purpose - collecting revenue with which to fund needed government services.  The tax code would not try to encourage or discourage behavior with deductions or credits.  It would treat all income equally be it from work (minus FICA deduction), dividends, pensions, insurance benefits, bonuses, interest, lawsuits, lotteries etc.

As of 2008, people’s income from stock dividends has been taxed at 15% while income from savings interest can be as high as 35%.  Actual capital gains are also now at the 15% level, down from 35%, while only a maximum of 85% of Social Security benefits are taxable and legal settlements are not taxed at all.  Under this new system all these income sources would be treated as equal.

Under this plan there would be no itemized deductions, only a standard one.  For discussion purposes it could be $20,000 for an individual or $40,000 for a couple.  There would be no deductions for children, medical care costs, charitable contributions, education costs, mortgage payments, state income tax etc.  Currently there is no itemized deduction for buying food for the family or for eating at restaurants with the kids, but people do it.  There is no itemized deduction for buying the family clothes, but people do it.  There was a deduction for interest paid on credit cards and car loans but that was dropped 30 years ago. People still pay interest on them even though they can’t write it off.  The three martini lunch was dropped as a business deduction, but people still have them every day.

There would be only five tax brackets that would range from (after the standard deduction) 10% for net incomes up to $50,000, 15% up to $100,000, 20% up to $250,000, 25% up to one million, and 35% for income over $1 million These brackets could be adjusted to raise or lower the tax burden.

Here are some examples:

Imagine that there is a couple that earned $50,000 in net salary (after deducting FICA), $20,000 in Social Security benefit payments, $10,000 in interest and $5,000 in capital gains.  The total is $85,000.  The couple would deduct $40,000 in a standard deduction, leaving them a net income of $60,000.  The first $50,000 could be at a 10% tax rate or, in this case, $5,000.  The remaining $5,000 of net income would be taxed at 15% or, in this case, $750.  The total tax would be $5,750 or 6.7% of their gross income.

Let’s say there is a couple who earned $200,000 in net salary and $310,000 in capital gains.  Their total would be $510,000.  Using the standard deduction, they would net $470,000.  The first $50,000 would be at 10%. The second $50,000 would be taxed at 15%.  The next $150,000 would be taxed at 20% and the remaining $230,000 (net income over $250,000) would be taxed 25%.  So in this case, the couple would owe $5,000+$7,500+$30,000+$57,500 = $100,000 in taxes. That equals a 20.8% tax on their gross income.

As a third example has a couple making $5 million in capital gains, (including dividends also currently taxed at only 15%).  They would have a standard deduction of $40,000 and then owe $230,000 for the first $1 million and $1.2 million for the remaining $4 million for a total of $1.43 million or 28.6% in federal income tax.  

This tax code would not give an Earned Income Credit or a Making Work Pay Credit to low earners who currently not only don’t pay taxes but actually get paid taxes costing $115 billion a year.  The lowered rates for the wealthiest, under Bush/Cheney reduced tax revenues by almost $100 billion a year.  There would be no credit for student loan interest or for taking care of one’s young children.

That does not mean that those in need of relief for college loans, income supplements, special medical needs or anything else currently credited in the tax code would be ignored.  With the money saved, hundreds of billions a year, there would be money for these purposes.  More college grants and very low interest federal loans could be awarded to deserving students; low income workers could receive a reduced cost for health care benefits, help with rent payments, access to food discounts - benefits targeted at those in need of help.

But what about the loss of deductions for home mortgages and for charitable contributions? Will people still buy homes or give to charities?  Good question.

While home mortgages have other problems now, if people see buying a home as a lifetime investment in their own well being, they will continue to buy homes.  With some of the revenue raised by eliminating this deduction, more affordable mortgages can be funded to qualifying families.

With charities, it is an open question.  I have found in my own case, now that I have subjected my family taxes to the standard deduction, I still pay as much for charities and feel better about it because I am not also having to keep track of every receipt and tally them to see how much I can save for my kindness.  This way it is just out of the desire to help others without any expectation of reward.

I believe that this recommended tax code change would raise needed revenue by both expanding the base, meaning more than just half of all families will be paying some tax and by getting the rich to pay more but at a lower marginal tax rate. 

Then, if this plan is adapted and revenue is raised, it must be put to good use.  Government waste including fraud, inefficiency, ineffectiveness, duplication of effort and international overreaching must be reduced as much as possible.  Our tax dollars should go to good use. 
                            

Surely, Their 15 Minutes Are Up

I always liked Andy Worhol’s idea that everyone wanted and eventually got their 15 minutes of fame.  One of the current news shows now has a segment called “Your 15 Minutes Are Up.” I think that this good idea should be applied more broadly.  The media should stop quoting certain people who have long since been irrelevant.  Here are some suggestions:

In the field loosely called “entertainment” we have already seen some famous quotables disappear from the public eye and ear.  Remember Paris?  Remember Nicole?  Remember Brittany?  No?  See how it works?  So how about no more stories about Lindsay, Charlie, Ted, the Donald,  Jessica, Kim or Khloe? Aren’t their 15 minutes way more than up? Who are they and what do their lives have anything to do with us?  Why should we care what they were or weren’t wearing?  Why need we know what they did wrong lately?  Why are they getting paid for being celebrities? Last year while 13 million Americans were unemployed, Kim made more than $10 million.  For What?  For whom?  Let us live without major news stories about these celebrities in name only. If we want to hear about them, we can tune in to our favorite celebrity gossip show, but let’s keep them off the Nightly News, please. They are narcissists and coverage only encourages them.

But what about politics?  We have forgotten Spiro, most former House speakers, many former mayors, almost every unsuccessful candidate for Vice President and even some villains from the previous administration like Rummy, Wolfowitz, Perl, Gonzales and Ashcroft.  Can we start forgetting to mention people like Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, Sarah P., Michele B., Newt, Herman, Glenn, Sean, Rush, Rick P., Rick S. and most of the Fox News cluster of political hacks?  Must we continue to hear hatred and disinformation from a group that claims to represent a part of our country that should not be encouraged? Do we think that they will someday say or do something that seems honest or intelligent?  Really? Let’s try to name one thing that any of them ever said that reflected intellect, education, wisdom, insight, decency, kindness, goodness or compassion.  Give up? Let’s try to remember why these political prostitutes ever got our attention. Can we? So let’s not quote them anymore.  Their views will always be welcome on their party’s official propaganda network of fixed news.  Let that be the quarantine of their hypocritical negativity.

They too are narcissists and coverage only encourages them.

What would our daily news be without stories and opinions involving the above mentioned who are well past their 15 minute time limit?  The news could be about important issues of the day.  The news could avoid hyperbole and easy fixes by not interviewing the brave souls who survive some of the natural disasters that are occurring almost weekly now. “It was a miracle that even though we lost everything, no one was killed and that’s all that matters.”  We know and appreciate your faith and courage, but we have heard it a million times. We can live without reporting on tragedies night after night until we no longer care.  We could live without interviews of people on the street to get their views.  We don’t care.

So what could the mainstream news be like?  It could be like the PBS Newshour which briefly covers the day’s events but then focuses on three or four stories to get an in-depth analysis of each issue and its context. There should be a minimum of speculation which almost always turns out to be completely wrong - more about the speculator than the speculation.  Many reporters are timid and they propose timid concerns rather than facts and figures.

We could be given more facts and figures rather than a lot of adjectives and adverbs.  If we hear a report about a labor dispute, give us the numbers.  How much do they make now and how much do they want?  If we are talking about unemployment tell us who the unemployed are: what is the percentage of the 12.5 million by age group, educational status and type of work.  That way we can start focusing on the solution instead of thinking it is happening everywhere, to everyone.

When inviting experts to represent each side of an issue, let it be respected experts with no political axe to grind.  It makes no sense to ask lobbyists or politicians who have a clear bias to tell us the way it is when we know that these people have lost their integrity years ago.  Do we believe Paul Ryan, John Boehner, Eric Cantor or Mitch McConnell?  Really? Do we respect Paul’s grasp of macroeconomics or John’s emotional facial expressions and his imitation of penguins walking or Eric’s denial that he was adopted or Mitch’s impression of Huckleberry Hound or of Tommy the Turtle that he offers up daily to distract us from his real intent?  Clearly the Speaker should never play poker because he has no poker face - it reacts badly every time he lies and the cameras seem to always catch it because of its frequency. And must we be subjected to John McCain insisting that we go to war - with everyone: Libya, Egypt, Syria, Iran, Russia and soon maybe North Korea, China and all of Africa? When grapes turn sour and bitter must we be expected to swallow them? When will their 15 minutes be up?

When interviewing political figures, reporters can start not only quoting their sometimes absurd comments or answers, but also challenging them.  When the Republicans in the House were trying to blackmail the President into concessions in exchange for raising the debt ceiling, their leaders said that it was a balanced approach and was needed to force cuts in our bloated budget.  They said that we have kicked the growing deficit down the road too long.  The press should have asked if they remembered that at the end of the Clinton administration in early 2001, we were running surpluses and planned to eliminate the accumulated deficit by 2003.  They could have asked him if he remembered what happened to derail that prospect and drive us into $15 trillion in debt.  They could have asked him how it was balanced when the debt had to be raised as it had eight times under the previous administration as it had been without debate dozens of times in the recent past.

When the very unsuccessful candidate for President in 2008 said that we could not deport people here illegally because they were G-d’s children, why didn’t every reporter, or at least one, ask him that with that logic aren’t all creatures G-d’s children and if so how can we go to war with them or put them in prison when they commit crimes?  When this same candidate accused Barack Obama of wanting to use taxes to redistribute wealth, why didn’t the media point out that that was the very function of government and always has been.  When the press is given a photo of a crime victim to show on T.V. and realize that instead of being of a 17 year old football player who is over six feet tall, it is of a small 12 year old, they could demand a more up-to-date picture.

This November, we will be given an opportunity to tell many members of Congress that their 15 minutes are up.  My hope is that the majority of freshmen members of the House are encouraged to rush back to their lives of obscurity and let us hear from intelligent, responsible representatives whose integrity is still intact.   But an informed electorate is dependent upon accurate information.  The mainstream media could take it upon themselves to change their ways and begin focusing on serious reporting.  If a candidate being interviewed is saying something that doesn’t make sense, the reporter must pursue it.  “What does that mean?” or “Could you be more specific?” or “Can you give me an example?” or “Do you want to listen to the tape yourself to hear what you said ten minutes ago?” or even “Are you kidding?” or finally, “Are you crazy or something?”

I could say so much more about this, but I’m afraid that my 15 minutes are now up.

What Would Jesus Do and Say?

Several of the Republican candidates trying to be their party’s nominee in November’s presidential election have made G-d, religion and its teachings at the forefront of their campaigns.  It started with Sarah, who after consultation with Him and public opinion surveys decided not to run.  Then it was her surrogate, Michele, who thought that her Lord or her husband wanted her to be President.  She was terribly wrong.  Then there was Rick, who was in love with America and G-d. Neither reciprocated. Now there is Rick II or the Saint.  He is preaching Catholic gospel that even the Catholics no longer ascribe to but that the Christian evangelicals just can’t get enough of. These people love Jesus and follow his teachings.  They think that his teachings include having sex only for procreation, not recreation, and therefore not using birth control, not having prenatal screenings to check for predictable future medical problems and never having an abortion even in cases of rape, incest or congenital irregularities.  They believe that Jesus hated gays and so they do too.  Many are not crazy about minorities or Jews either.  They love their guns and are willing to fight to the death to protect their right to use them.

These evangelicals are very conservative and believe that government is interfering too much in their lives and businesses.  They fear that their hard earned money will be squandered on helping the poor by providing them with health coverage, education and food subsidies.  They are for the rich who they feel pay too many taxes to help the neediest instead of going where it should - to build a larger and more powerful armed force to keep our country number one in the world.

These people say that they love Jesus and want to live the life he recommended.  They love him so much that they want this to be a Christian country, preferably a white, Christian country filled with people just like them.

What would Jesus say?  What would Jesus do?

Jesus is said to have preached for less than three years.  He perhaps realized that he wouldn’t have much time since he no doubt knew his fate, so he kept his teaching very simple.  The Jewish tradition from which he and many of his followers came had 613 laws governing all forms of activity.  There were laws about what animals could be eaten and how they should be slaughtered, laws governing commerce including the treatment of servants and slaves and laws about relationships and inheritance. While many Jews even back then were able to read and write, few probably knew all 613 laws and did not carry them around on note cards or on their iPads.

When asked which of the 613 to focus on, Jesus is quoted as replying “Love thy neighbor as thyself” taken to mean “do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” but probably actually meaning “treat each person as an end as well as a means to an end.”  I think that he believed that if that one law could be followed, every other law would be obvious.  If you treat everyone as though it were you, the ultimate end,  you would not kill, steal, lie, commit adultery,  envy your neighbor, cheat, keep slaves etc. He apparently was not that concerned about keeping kosher or making sacrifices at the temple.

When a crowd was stoning an accused prostitute, incorrectly identified later as Mary Magdalene, Jesus said “Let he who has not sinned, throw the first stone.”

When confronted with severe income inequality, he said:  “A rich man has as much chance of going to heaven as does a camel of going through the eye of a needle” and “the way you treat the poorest among you, is the way you treat me” and Jesus could have added “and the way I will treat you,” but that went without saying. So what would Jesus say to the new Republican Party which seems more and more like the New White Man's Christian Party.  What might he say to these “good Christians” who live to win G-d's love and salvation?

Should they hate homosexuals? Should they want a stronger armed force to crush our many enemies?  Should people be allowed to be as rich as they can possibly get?  Should the poor be left to their own devices to teach them some self-reliance? Should people be punished for having sex for non-reproductive purposes? Should we all have as many weapons as we have room for to protect us from our neighbors?

What is Aramaic for “Hell no!”?