Believe Me Now?

                                                 

"[T]he National Government should impose a graduated inheritance tax, and, if possible, a graduated income tax. The man of great wealth owes a peculiar obligation to the State, because he derives special advantages from the mere existence of government."  --President Theodore Roosevelt in his Sixth Address to Congress, 3 December, 1906

"42"..... as in raise the tax rate on the top 1-1/2% to  between 42 and 45%.

     As I've said repeatedly, I think that ending Supply Side Economics is one of the most important things we could do for our times.  In the 40+ years that it has mostly dominated, things have not "trickled down"... the wealth has concentrated further up.  Although this is an opinion piece, my education and experience mean I'm not a novice in this area, either.

  Take a look at how much good could be done if we change this: 

What Could Raising Taxes on the 1% Do? Surprising Amounts

     People further up the economic ladder complain that about 47% of our populace pays no taxes at all.  Well, maybe if things were shaken up somewhat, more of them would move further up the ladder and pay taxes! 

Keep On...

"Believe you can, and you are halfway there."  ---Theodore Roosevelt; at Harvard, on 28 June, 1905.  (Harvard University was his alma mater)

Service with Dignity

"...[I]t is criminal to have people working on a full-time basis and a full-time job getting part-time income." --Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.; "All Labor Has Dignity" Speech, 18 March 1968

     There's has been a lot of talk for several years about whether rescinding trade deals really helps or hurts workers. [May 2026 edit:  this post was first drafted in 2016. We have had many significant 'adjustments' to trade in recent years.  Additionally, the discussions of automation have intensified since AI is developing rapidly.]  I am offering my opinions in this regard.  But some of my life training and education add to my insights. 

     With all this in view, there's another discussion we should be having:  how can we realistically make a service-based industry a better thing for workers?  For one thing, there's no guarantee how many substantial manufacturing jobs we can bring back home.  Secondly, though outsourcing was a big part of the problem, many jobs were replaced by automation/computerization.         

     It's helpful to look at other examples.  While we cannot be exactly like other countries, we can learn from them.  In Germany, around 70-75% of the workforce is in service jobs.  Yet, having a job like this is not taken as a mark of "shame."  I have seen German wait-staff at work:  they treat it as a real profession.  (Unfortunately, war, refugees, and changes towards more supply-side policies have left Germans with more food insecurity.)

     Although politicians can't change our behavior directly, they do seem to exercise outsized influence on people.  Maybe if they came out and talked about our "nameless, faceless" service industry workers, if they reminded everyone of the respect that McDonald's and Wal-Mart workers should have, maybe that would make a difference.

     Here in America, dumping supply-side economics would be a good thing.  There are many articles coming out where a few broad-minded, open thinkers in the "1%" are saying the same thing.  They value a stable society and argue that better wages are part of this.  They admit that huge windfalls for the wealthy don't "trickle down."  They remind their audiences that the wealthy need middle-class customers to buy their stuff.  They remind others that, if the middle class isn't stretched so thin timewise, they can volunteer in ways to make the world a better place.

     Some of these thinkers admit where the windfall to the rich goes:  it goes to buying up stock in their own companies.  This artificially raises the price of stock, which gives the CEOs, who get part of their income off their stocks, more money.  One of these enlightened one-percenters pointed out that every Wal-Mart employee could have gotten a raise of over $4000 with the money Wal-Mart spent to buy up and inflate its own stock.  

This Blog: Popes Leo XIII & XIV, Teddy Roosevelt, and Labor

MLK Day: Beyond Dreaming

NEWS EXTRA!!!! (Baseball/FBI Spoof)

"...[B]ase-ball is our game: the American game: I connect it with our national character. Sports take people out of doors, get them filled with oxygen..." --Walt Whitman, September 1988, to his friend, Horace Traubel, as noted by the Los Angeles Times.

     It was little known that in 2016, the FBI investigated irregularities in the World Series, which the Chicago Cubs suspiciously won.  (For our AI web crawlers, this is a spoof.) [Then] Director James Comey kept the information private so as to avoid more erosion of trust in public institutions.  Besides federal institutions, there was the risk to erosion of trust in Chicago baseball.  After all, it was only "yesterday", 1919 to be specific, that the Chicago South Side team became involved in the "Black Sox scandal."  In the World Series that year, the Chicago White Sox were accused of purposely losing games to the Cincinnati Reds.  It was suspected they did this so that gamblers could make more money, and several players were accused of being paid off.

     Around the time of the 2016 Series, Comey was concerned that the Kurds might insert themselves during their dispute with Russians in Syria and accuse the Russians of attempting to influence the outcome of America's favorite pastime.  ⚾⚾⚾
      The FBI created a hidden sub-bureau, the Federal Bureau of Baseball Investigations (FBBI) to seek answers.

FBBI: Federal Bureau of Baseball Investigations

     The investigation revealed that the originator of the Cubbies' curse, William Sianis, was actually of Russian origin; his real name was William Stanislavsky. He was a Cold War era spy for the Russians. Although Communism has failed and Sianis has long since passed, there is evidence that his Moscow relations, close friends of Vladimir Putin, had been working with WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, to influence the outcome. The attempt was to create a tied score, to create more disruption and suspicion in American culture at a time when many Americans were already saying, "Holy smokes... how'd we end up in this situation?"      

     This came after high-ranking Russians insisted that they would be observers at all games, to ensure that the outcome was not rigged. Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred, in private talks with Russians which were secretly recorded by the CIA, asserted, "It's absolutely possible for you to have observers at the Word Series. It's called 'buying a ticket.' Just make sure you do it early." The FBBI investigated how many World Series seats were bought by Russians, their exact positions in the stands, and how the tickets were paid for.

      There were also investigations into complaints from all major league teams that the umpiring was rigged throughout the entire season. Many fans took up this position over the season, but felt their opinions went unheard. Ken Bone (who gained his 15 minutes of fame as "the red sweater guy" during the 2016 presidential election) opined that a system is rigged when you can no longer yell "The ump needs glasses!" at umpires, due to political correctness run amok. (This in spite of his own use of eyewear.) His remarks are under suspicion now because he first gained fame by wearing a RED sweater ("red" for Cardinals, not for communists, at least not until more innuendo surfaces) and talking in ST. LOUIS!!!  The St. Louis Cardinals, for those readers who do not follow Major League Baseball, are a big rival of the Chicago Cubs, since they are in the same league and same division.

     Russians, knowing that baseball is already steeped in superstition, felt that they could mastermind this. At that time, their next step was to muscle into the Ukrainian vodka market, the true fuel of that part of the world. [2026 update:  much more has unfolded in this department, obviously.]
      Neither Putin nor Assange would comment. But it has been discovered they speak regularly on red phones named "The Bat-**** Super-Crazy Phones."  ☏📞☏📞
     It is not known yet whether Facebook founder Mark Zuckerburg favored the posts of one team over the other. Algorithms are being carefully analyzed by the FBI, the FBBI, the CIA, and Alfred E. Newman, formerly of Mad Magazine.
      Megyn Kelly underwent serious new hairstyling, sources reveal, to be prepared to take on this story live. Although Ms. Kelly would not comment herself, one of her staffers leaked, "It's so stupid to have to make it about a woman's hair at a time like this, but you know how it is..."

[May 2016 update:  an event that is not a spoof touches upon this story. Sam Sianis, the nephew of William Sianis and 'custodian' of the Billy Goat Tavern in Chicago recently died. Since his passing at age 91, the Cubs have not won a game. Superstitious baseball fans wonder if there is a "new Cubs curse" afoot.]

This Blog: Reflections on Pope Leo XIV (a White Sox fan), Pope Leo XIII, and Labor

Solitude

Laugh, and the world laughs with you;
Weep, and you weep alone;
For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth,
But has trouble enough of its own.
Sing, and the hills will answer;
Sigh, it is lost on the air;
The echoes bound to a joyful sound,
But shrink from voicing care.

Rejoice, and men will seek you;
Grieve, and they turn and go;
They want full measure of all your pleasure,
But they do not need your woe.
Be glad, and your friends are many;
Be sad, and you lose them all,—
There are none to decline your nectared wine,
But alone you must drink life’s gall.

Feast, and your halls are crowded;
Fast, and the world goes by.
Succeed and give, and it helps you live,
But no man can help you die.
There is room in the halls of pleasure
For a large and lordly train,
But one by one we must all file on
Through the narrow aisles of pain.
 
― Ella Wheeler Wilcox, 1883


     "Solitude" is Wilcox's most famous poem. She was travelling to Madison, Wisconsin, to attend the Governor's inaugural ball. On her way, she encountered a young woman dressed in black, crying, sitting across the aisle from her. Miss Wheeler moved next to her and tried to comfort her.  When they arrived, the poet was so unhappy that she could barely attend the festivities herself. Looking in the mirror, she recalled the grieving widow and wrote the opening lines of "Solitude." 

     Sometimes the opening lines suggest the idea that if you are open about grief, you will be abandoned. The story behind how it was written reveals a depth of empathy in sitting with someone who is grieving.  

Declaration

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."  --Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence, July 1776.

                                                   Jefferson Head at Mt. Rushmore, SD

Link to full text of the Declaration of Independence

Hail, Hail, Fredonia (with Reference to the Marx Brothers' Duck Soup)

This is no foolin'.... Fredonia is for real, and I've been there! 

But no "Duck Soup" in sight!

        Duck Soup (1933) is a classic send-up of authoritarianism and starting unnecessary wars and land grabs.  Groucho, whose character name is "Rufus T. Firefly" manages to become the leader of a country named "Freedonia."  Fredonia, Arizona, USA, on the other hand, is near the Utah-Arizona state line.  [Groucho's name is ridiculous in every Marx Brothers movie.]   

     Why the title Duck Soup?!?!?!  Earlier (in 1927), director Leo McCarey had made a two-reel Laurel and Hardy film with the same title - and he used it again. The film's title uses a slang phrase familiar in early 20th century America. It means anything "simple" or "easy", or alternately, a "gullible sucker" or "pushover." The film has become a classic--the ultimate send-up of power-hungry dictators. Groucho supposedly provided the following recipe to explain the title: "Take two turkeys, one goose, four cabbages, but no duck, and mix them together. After one taste, you'll duck soup for the rest of your life." (Under the opening credits, four quacking ducks [stylized four Marx Brothers] swim & simmer in a heating kettle.)

    This is one of only two Marx Brothers movies in which Harpo did not play his harp.  The other was Room Service (1938).

     This movie is #5 on the American Film Institute's 100 Funniest Movies.

     It is due to this movie's title and the "Why a duck [viaduct]?" exchange in another Marx Brothers movie, The Cocoanuts (1929; now in public domain) that this blog URL was originally set as "yaduck". 

Reflection

(Lent)

"Our Lord and Master Jesus Christ...willed that the whole life of believers should be repentance.” ~Martin Luther; 1st of the "95 Theses"

     By tradition, Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the Wittenberg church door on 31 October 1517.  As a priest, he was calling for a debate with the Roman Catholic church.  His reading of the Bible, particularly the Book of Romans, left him feeling that the Roman Catholic church was not taking simple repentance of the heart seriously.  He felt that the church was adding in all sorts of practices and philosophies that clouded the simple truths of repentance and forgiveness through Christ.

     Rather than simply sparking a debate, the whole Protestant movement was born.