Form 1040

I’ve spent most of the day figuring out my income tax.  People always ask me why I don’t hire someone, but I believe that in a democracy run by the people (?), the average citizen should be able to do his or her own taxes.  

I am supposed to be grateful to Trump for the tax cut, but I didn’t see it.  I know that many people use their taxes as a way to force savings, looking forward to a refund.  Me, I never get a refund.  I always have to pay, and occasionally have to cough up a penalty for not paying enough during the year.

You’re supposed to file quarterly when that happens, but for me it’s worth the fine not to have to mess with it four times a year.  Once is bad enough.

I also take pride in the fact that we pay our full share.  One year our tax bill was higher than President Reagan’s.  It’s probably higher than Trump’s, but we’ll never know, since he won’t release his return.  I report everything, including fair winnings and scrap metal sold to Zaprazny.  

At least this year we won’t have to sell our car to make our tax payment.  That was probably the low point of our tax history.  

Trump's foreign policy failures explained

In the latest issue of the New York Review of Books, Jessica T. Mathews has the best explanation of Trump’s failures in foreign policy I’ve read.  Here it is:

Two years in the Oval Office have had no effect on his conviction that the presidency is about himself, whereas the foreign leaders he meets are looking out for their national interests.  

Unfortunately, in Trump’s eyes, he sees his personal interests as synonymous as those of the U.S. 

March madness

Linda and I both picked Gonzaga, so that felt good, but we messed up with Purdue.  We both picked Tennessee.  I didn’t know about that guy who stands near half court and sinks three pointers one after another.

Speaking of March Madness, what the heck does Betsy DeVos have against the Special Olympics?  For-profit diploma mills ok, special olympics not so much.  Is there anything this administration won’t do to hurt the most vulnerable?

Church ladies

The Lutheran Church in Lehighton operates a food bank every Tuesday.  People leave with bags and boxes of nutritious food.  I don’t know exactly how much each person is allocated, but it seems substantial.

The church also operates a thrift store that sells dishes, clothes, toys, shoes, and everything else you would expect a thrift store to offer.  That helps to pay for the food bank.

A small army of women (and a few men) are operating the cash register, pricing items dropped off, filling boxes with food, sorting food donations, organizing merchandise, keeping records, and welcoming the people coming in for the food.  Various analogies come to mind, including bee hive and ant hill.  

I go in about once a month to haul away their scrap metal.  Everybody is pleasant, helpful, and kind.  I never leave without feeling better than when I arrived.

Letter to Sen. Toomey

Dear Senator Toomey:

Thank you for voting against the President’s declaration of a “National Emergency.”  Safeguards against the executive allocating money on his own without approval go all the way back to the Magna Carta in 1215.  This declaration certainly violates the checks and balances system built into our Constitution.

I’m sure you received some flack about your vote, but you did the right thing.

Bump stock disposal

In a recent article in the Morning Call, a bump stock owner was bemoaning the fact that he didn’t know what do with his now illegal bump stocks, which convert weaponry into automatics and are a favorite of mass murderers.

Drop it off at my house.  Here in Towamensing we have weekly garbage pickup.  I’ll just put it in a large plastic bag.  By Monday at 1 p.m. it will be gone.

End gerrymandering in Penna.

Here is an announcement for people in Carbon County, Pennsylvania.  (I have to add that-there are also Carbon counties in Montana, Wyoming, and Utah.)  I'm putting it on the Palmerton Library door.     Please attend if you are able.

Ongoing efforts to end gerrymandering – What's new since the PA Supreme Court decision,  will be the topic of an informational program for the public to be held at the Palmerton Area Library, 402 Delaware Ave., Palmerton.

Tuesday, March 26^th, 6:00 -7:30 p.m. (Upstairs Gallery Room)

Many people think that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court resolved gerrymandering. To the contrary, the court only required remedial maps for the 2018 and 2020 congressional elections. The court did nothing about Pennsylvania’s gerrymandered legislative districts. And, redistricting starts all over after each census, the next to take place in 2020. Come learn what is at stake for democracy, what could happen with business-as-usual, and how citizens can demand a better and transparent process.

Fair Districts PA is a nonpartisan coalition of citizens and organizations seeking to reform PA redistricting rules by taking the process out of the hands of party leaders and putting that process into the hands of an impartial, transparent, and accountable citizens’ commission.

For more information, contact the speaker, Diana Dakey, ddakey@comcast.net

___________________

You may have seen that the U.S. Supreme Court will hear gerrymandering cases.  Since the court is a branch of the Republican Party, it will not rule for the fair and nonpartisan drawing of districts.  This is one reform that will have to come from the bottom up

Representation by contribution

According to Michael Tomasky in his wonderful book If We Can Keep It, one proposal made at the Constitutional Convention for deciding how states would be represented in Congress was to assign representation by the amount of contributions the state made to the national treasury.  The more contributions, the more members of Congress.

The proposal failed to get a the support of a majority of the delegates, and ultimately we ended up with the House and the Senate.  Too bad.  Can you imagine the power of states like New York, Massachusetts, California, Washington, Oregon, and Illinois.  All those “taking” states like Mississippi, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and South Dakota would be out of luck.

Incidentally, I have taught American Government and Constitutional Law for years, and I never knew that.  I am constantly amazed at the limits of my knowledge.

The Mueller Report Report

In the last two years I have posted messages about the Meuller Report just once.  This one.

I was always more interested in the forcible separation of children from their parents at the border, in tax cuts for the wealthy and proposed cuts in Medicare and Social Security, in sagebrush grouse habitat, in the XL pipeline going through Sioux reservations, in complete support for Saudi Arabia, in a useless tariff war, in the constant drumbeat of racist policies and statements from the administration, in the breaking of one international agreement after another, in the weakening of clean water and clean air standards, in the appointment of unqualified right wing judges, in attacks on the free press, in the thin-skinned narcissism and whiney self-pity of the president, in lick-spittle toadies supporting that president’s every mood, and in the inability of approximately 40% of the American public to make the kind of judgements I had assumed patriotic Americans would make to oppose a man who doing his best to destroy democracy.

You can add more–health care, global warming, educational issues....we could fill pages.  Mueller is a decent man, but he is also a distraction.

Kentucky stereotype

A well-known teaching phenomenon is that if you tell a kid that he or she is really smart, that kid will come to believe it and do well.  On the other hand, if you tell a kid he or she is stupid and keep doing that, he or she will believe that as well.  

The same psychological results apply for groups of people.  Tell a bunch of kids from Lehigh Avenue that they won’t amount to anything, and soon they will behave badly and do their best to live up to their bad reputation or their stereotype.

You can see this for whole states.  When I say, “This guy is from Kentucky, and he is a ___________,” what word do you supply?  Hillbilly?  Redneck?  

Kentuckians know that is what people think, so they make an effort to live up to the common viewpoint.  When Kentucky governor Matt Bevin announced that he exposed his nine children to chicken pox, we are not surprised, first, that he would have nine children, and second, that he would put his kids in danger.  Nor would you be surprised that Gov. Bevin did his best to prevent the poorest residents of his state from receiving Medicaid.

We can’t imagine a governor of New York or Pennsylvania or New Jersey behaving that way.  It’s Kentucky.

Like pulling teeth

My mother came from a family of 15.  She was a teenager during the Depression.  I have a picture of her home; it looks like a Dorothea Lange FSA photo.  

When she or one of her brothers and sisters had a toothache, her Father had one answer–pull it.  She said her father would give the patient some whiskey before starting the procedure.

Today I had two teeth pulled, and I am so glad that I:

     live in a time of modern dentistry.

     have dental insurance.

     am wealthy enough to pay what the insurance doesn’t cover.

     am married to a woman who schleps me around, cooks soft food, fills 

my prescriptions,and takes care of me.

     have friends like retired dentist Jan as well as Janette and Anne with 

their wealth of medical experience to give me encouragement.

My smallpox scar

The scar is on my left arm between the shoulder and the elbow.  Our grandson Gavin doesn’t have one.  By the time he came along smallpox had been eradicated.  Just think of that–a disease that killed hundreds of millions over centuries has been eliminated.  

Would that happen today?  Probably not.  Anti-vaccination idiots would claim that the vaccine was a secret government plot, or that it caused dementia, or it was a scheme by Big Pharma to get rich.

Some people probably held such views, but they had no means to organize or contact each other.  At one time the idea that a child porn ring was operating in the basement of a Washington pizza restaurant might have gotten you committed; today it gets you millions of followers on Twitter.  

I caught the mumps, the measles, and chicken pox.  When I was a kid there were no vaccines for those illnesses.  I came very close to dying from the measles and later when I had the Asian flu.  That people would be willing to have their kids go through that or expose other people’s kids to those diseases is criminal.  I am using the word “criminal” deliberately.

Speaking of health, today is the first day since last Friday that my temperature is approaching normal, thanks to some very powerful antibiotics.  I want to thank all my fans who emailed me or called inquiring about my health.  I appreciate you both.

Where's Christman?

I had a dentist appointment on Friday morning, and Dr. Howland found an infection above an incisor.  He prescribed an antibiotic, and I have been taking four pills a day since then.  It's not working.  I've had a fever since Friday evening, ranging between 99 and 102.  Mostly what I do is sleep and feel sorry for myself.

Tomorrow I will call Doc Howland and ask him what's going on.  I am amazed at how often things go wrong on weekends when all the offices are closed.

The Trump "base"

People voted for Trump for all kinds of reasons.  Some were racists.  Some were concerned about gun control.  Some were angry about China.  Others were concerned about immigrants who were undocumented.  Quite a few really hated Hillary Clinton.  

Many Trump voters were not firmly committed Trumpists.  Today I read an article that said every time we talk about “the Base,” we are lumping all of those people together and making them feel like they are, in effect, part of a tribal grouping.  The author suggested that we stop talking about “the Base” and simply think of them as individual voters.  He said we would be more likely to convert those voters that way.

I have mixed feelings about this, and I don’t know whether that is true or not.

Heartbeats

A number of state legislatures, including the Ohio House of Representatives, have passed bills that prohibit the abortion of a fetus with a heartbeat.  Since the heart is one of the first things developed, as early as the sixth week of pregnancy, bills like this basically make abortion illegal.

I wonder if the same logic applies to people on respirators who have left instructions to “pull the plug.”  The termination of life is usually measured by brain activity, since the heart can be kept beating long after a person has expired.  If we are going by heartbeat, then we need to keep those dead people’s hearts beating for as long as the machines hold out.

Karma

Kosoko Jackson, who is black and gay, worked as a “sensitivity reader” for publishing houses.  His job was to flag “problem content” which was insensitive to minorities.  

He once said, “Stories about the civil rights movement should be written by black people.  Stories of suffrage should be written by women.  Ergo, stories about boys during life-changing times, like the AIDS epidemic, should be written by gay men.  Why is this so hard to get?”

Jackson recently wrote a book for young teens entitled “A Place for Wolves.”  One of the bad guys was an Albanian Muslim.  Jackson was attacked for his insensitivity, and the publisher withdrew the book.  

Here’s one example of just how stupid this whole thing is.  The first time I read “A Woman Lit by Fireflies,” I somehow missed the name of the author.  I was just amazed at how she captured the inner thoughts of a desperate woman.  When I put it down, I turned to see who wrote it, and found the author was Jim Harrison, a hard-drinking tough guy.  

It’s fiction.  You can write about other genders, other races, just others.  Empathy is universal.  The issue is not who you are, but how well you write.  

I hope Mr. Jackson has learned a lesson, but probably not.

I read about Mr. Jackson in an article by Jennifer Senior, “Teen Fiction and the Perils of Cancel Culture,” New York Times, (Mar. 10, 2019), p. 10 (SR).

Maduro burned aid?

Mike Pence said that President Maduro of Venezuela had “...burned food and medicine” coming into Venezuela.  He even said Maduro danced when it happened.  The State Department also released a video stating that Maduro had ordered the trucks carrying the aid to be burned.  

This was terrible, except it evidently didn’t happen.  Video of the event, released by Columbia, suggests that it was actually an anti-Maduro protestor who threw a Molotov cocktail that started the fire.  

Oops.

See “Maduro Burned Aid?  Footage Shows Otherwise,” New York Times, (Mar. 11, 2019), pp. A1, A5.

American politics explained

A billionaire, a worker, and an immigrant are sitting at a table with 1000 cookies.  

The billionaire takes 999 cookies and says to the worker, “Watch out, that immigrant is going to take your cookie.”

Thanks to my friend Bill for that tidbit.

Crazy stuff

When Trump visited survivors of the Alabama tornados, people brought bibles for him to autograph.  Why?

Was it the only book they had in their houses?

Did they think they might later sell them on EBay?

Was it done on a bet to see if the Bibles would burst into flame?

Did they think Trump wrote the portion predicting Armageddon? 

Somebody said this was like Hannibal Lecter signing a cookbook.

Cashless stores

Philadelphia recently passed an ordinance that would fine businesses that no longer accept cash, although the ordinance has a number of exceptions.  

It does not apply to businesses that sell goods through memberships or to parking lots or to rentals that require security deposits.  Cashless stores, of course, discriminate against people who don’t have credit cards or bank accounts.

Amazon has expressed concern about the ordinance; it is considering opening 3000 stores that would be cashless.  A report issued in December said that about 29 percent of Americans do not use cash in a typical week, and those with household incomes over $75,000 were most unlikely to use cash.

Who uses cash?  The poor, who don’t have credit cards or bank accounts, and old people, who are too stubborn to get credit cards, don’t know how to “swipe,” and don’t have a smartphone.

I’m in the latter category.  I already can’t buy an airline ticket; Linda has to get them.  The only reason I have a transponder so I can use “EasyPass” on the turnpike is because Linda got it for me.  I have never “swiped” a card.  I do have the card that allows me to get cash out of the ATM.

When friends hear about my lack of technical sophistication, they sometimes say, “But you do a blog.”  Yeah, I do.  My friend René set it up for me years ago; if I ever get a new computer I’ll have to get him back to do it again.  And the reason the blog doesn’t have music or pictures is because I never learned how to do that.  And please please don’t tell me how easy it is. 

I am happy with the Philly ordinance.  And if Amazon ever does open 3000 stores that are cashless, it won’t bother me.  I have never bought anything from that establishment, and I don’t ever intend to.  So there.

Stupid Harvard students

Ronald S. Sullivan, the director of Harvard’s criminal-law clinic and the first African-American to be appointed a faculty dean at Harvard, has joined a team of lawyers representing Harvey Weinstein, the guy whose sexual misconduct was the impetus for the whole “MeToo” movement.  

Now a group of students is calling for Sullivan’s resignation as dean.  They say that Mr. Sullivan is not fit to be dean if he represents Mr. Weinstein.  Over 200 people have signed a petition calling for him to resign his faculty dean position.  

One Harvard student said, “Do you really want to one day accept your diploma from someone who for whatever reason, professional or personal, believes it is O.K. to defend such a prominent figure at the center of the #MeToo movement?”

Perhaps the better question is, “How did a student who has so little understanding of the American legal system and the right of every accused person to mount a defense ever get admitted into Harvard?

Info for this post is from Jan Ransom and Michael Gold, “Harvard Dean Is Criticized for Defending Weinstein,” New York Times, (Mar. 6, 2019), A21.

Contempt

Arthur C . Brooks, president of the American Enterprise Institute, recently wrote an article entitled “Our Culture of Contempt.”  Mr. Brooks said that America was characterized by people who had “contempt” for their opponents.  He said that each side believes “the other side is made up of knaves and fools.  It strokes our own biases while affirming our worst assumptions about those who disagree with us.”

He thought we needed to stop treating each other this way.  How can we persuade people we hold in contempt?

I don’t think we can.  How can I think of people who support a President who preaches hatred, sucks up the some of the worst dictators on the planet, says the border wall is a national emergency, appoints incompetents to the judiciary, thinks it is ok to rip children from their parents, lies constantly, is in constant need of praise, degrades women, thinks global warming is a hoax, never reads, ignores science, and has no understanding of how our democracy works...how can I not think of those people with contempt?  

If after two years in office those people still support Trump, then I hold them in contempt, and I do not think I could ever change their minds.  If they have not altered their opinion by this point, I won’t continue to bang my head against the wall.  I will simply oppose them with every means at my disposal.

"Screw Free Speech"–Penna. Senator Mike Regan

Pennsylvania Senator Sen. Mike Regan (R, York, Cumberland) introduced SB652 to define peaceful protests at “critical infrastructure” sites (pipelines and fracking sites) as second degree felonies, same as sexual assault or aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.  A repeat offense would constitute a first degree felony, same as kidnapping, rape, and murder.  

Since Pennsylvania already has laws against vandalism, the purpose of the bill is to stop non-violent protests against the pipeline builders and the frackers.  The bill is blatantly unconstitutional, and one hopes Gov. Wolf will veto it if it does pass.  Keep in mind that both houses of the Pennsylvania legislature have a majority of Republicans, bought and paid for by the fracking companies.

"Becoming" by Michelle Obama

I just finished Becoming, Michelle Obama’s autobiography.  A child of a stable lower middle class parents, both she and her brother Craig graduated from Princeton and Michelle went on to Harvard Law.  She took a job at a prestigious Chicago law firm, wasn’t quite satisfied with the type of law she was practicing, and gave it up for work more community-oriented.

She does detail some rough spots in her marriage to Barack.  At one point they met with a marriage counselor.  What struck me was that she basically put her own ambition and life on hold in the service of Barack’s political career.  She doesn’t complain about this, and she takes great pride in being a good mother, so I will complain for her and the sacrifices she made.

She made me realize how women in the limelight are forced to obsess about clothes.  The media were too much concerned about what she wore.  She quickly realized that her usual clothes, bought off the rack, were denigrated by the fashion industry and reflected badly on her as the first black “First Lady.”  You almost never hear critiques of what male political leaders (or male movie stars or college professors or tv reporters) are wearing, but there is a constant babble about women’s clothes.  I don’t know when we will get over that, but I hope it is soon.

I learned how the wives and children of presidents lead circumscribed lives.  Constant Secret Service protection.  Constant fears about possible assassins.  (A guy did take shots at the White House and hit the window of the room where Michelle and the kids often hung out.)

The criticism she had to endure was incredible.  She made the mistake of touching the Queen of England, and people went nuts.  (The Queen didn’t mind at all.)  She tried to get kids to eat better, and the fast food industry went nuts.  She and Barack went to a play in New York and Fox “News” went nuts because of the public funds expended.  

She praised Laura Bush for her help and advice during the transition.  The Bush family did everything they could to make the Obama’s move into the White House as easy as possible, and George Bush’s briefing books for Cabinet departments were thorough and extensive.  (Incidentally, Obama followed this precedent, but Trump and his appointees completely ignored the briefing books.)

Don’t read the book for discussions on the Health Care bill or other political matters.  This is not that kind of book.  Maybe that’s why I liked it so much.

Dealing with telemarketers, #2

Last night I posted my answer to robocalls.  In response Richard, one of my faithful readers, sent me a link to a prank answer to a telemarketer by a guy named Tom Mabe.  Here is the link:
<https://youtu.be/aOvXxnSEQKY>.  If that doesn't work, just go to YouTube and search for Tom Mabe Murder Scene.

Robo calls

I don’t have a smart phone, so I answer everything.  About three out of four calls are robo calls.  

I don’t hang up.  In almost all cases the call directs you to “Press One” to speak to a human representative. 

Say the call is about chronic back pain or credit cards.  Press one.  Then set the phone down.  Some guy will say, “Hello....  Is anyone there?  Hello?  Hello?  Hello?”  This will go on for a time, and finally the line will go dead.

I know it is petty and takes time, but it gives me so much satisfaction.

Another voter suppression scheme thwarted

The REPUBLICAN Texas Secretary of State David Whitley questioned the citizenship of 100,000 Texas voters.  Federal judge Fred Biery of the U.S. District Court in San Antonio said “...perfectly legal naturalized Americans were burdened with what the Court finds to be ham-handed and threatening correspondence from the state.”  He stopped the action.

The REPUBLICAN Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is among the nation’s leaders in voter suppression, said the state was “weighing its options.”  How about the option of democracy?