A Love Story            

            DeMeris Atherton* hooked her grocery sacks over two curled fingers and hurried inside.  The fingers wouldn’t straighten after her untreated hand injury in 1978.  She was getting arthritis in them, but they only ached occasionally.  She was bothered more by the lack of sight in her left eye, from an attack in late ’79 for which she blamed herself.  Heavy pale lines marked the damage her eye socket had suffered; her appearance haunted her.  She avoided mirrors.  She was glad that her long hair covered the bare spot on the other side of her scalp where it had scarred over and would never fill in.  She thought that was in 1982—couldn’t remember.  Her right arm ached all the time and changes in the weather made it worse.  It had been bearable for twenty years, but now she was taking pain pills. 

            She married Cal Atherton* in 1975, and he had always been so attentive.  Hard worker, but he had some trouble keeping jobs.  True, he had a temper on him—he had choked her that time in 2011—but she knew he loved her despite all his physical outbursts and the constant put downs.  Now she was worried.  Cal had ordered a gun, and it would arrive soon. DeMeris thought she might need to leave.  You know, find a place where nobody knew her.  Far away.

138 House legislators failed to support the 2013 Violence Against Women Act.  Maybe you should discover how YOUR Representative voted.  And remember.

*DeMeris and Cal Atherton are fictitious names.  Any resemblance to any persons, living or deceased, is coincidental and unintended.

Walking Tall or Not at All

            The Big Noise Movin’ From Winnetka this week?  Online state sales taxes, sometimes called ‘Gouge the Poor’ taxes because sales taxes help keep state income taxes low.  State money grabbers see online revenues as easily obtainable guilt-free windfall wealth.  Just blame congress and go back to state and local easing of the terrible burdens on corporations, industrialists, and universities.

            Unfortunately this plan hurts individuals.  The single mom who ekes out a living selling stuff on eBay is the victim of this plan.  For some, that makes it a good plan, because people struggling to survive in our hostile economy are sometimes too busy to vote.  It also sets up the concept of a national value-added-tax.  And don’t be foolish enough to think THAT isn’t in some screwball’s plan book.

            Here’s an idea: if congress endorses online sales taxes, don’t give the money to the states.  Instead, collect from all online sales and use the revenue to pay down our national debt.  All anybody in the right-of-center political pot seems to worry about is the deficit and the debt.  Since they hold the country hostage on economic issues like jobs and taxes, why don’t these Deficit / Debt Scolds take the state spend-monkeys out of the picture, and sling online sales tax revenues at the monster that frightens them most: the national debt?  Around here that seems a lot like walking your talk.  Unless…maybe it’s just talk.  Maybe it was never meant to be walked.

Pirates of the Golden Main                        

            Imagine your favorite movie-character pirate.  Replace the head cloth with a $50 haircut or a $150 perm, and the haphazard clothes with well-tailored ones.  Now add an expensive shirt or blouse, tasteful neckwear, and expensive shoes, and you have transformed a fictional brigand into a modern day pirate.  A thief every bit as crooked and not nearly as funny as his or her movie counterpart.

            The game is still in the Caribbean.  The piracy of long ago persists.  Today’s hearties still steal from others to enrich themselves, these days protesting to all that it’s perfectly legal.  Rich Americans appropriate the wealth created by others, leaving them poor and vulnerable.  They hide this wealth in offshore accounts where America can’t tax it and generate enough revenue to adequately help the poor and vulnerable.  Anyone with sufficient resources can become a pirate.  High-incomers from anywhere in a city or rural area, seeking to minimize taxes, can navigate this golden main.  The only people who feel good about it are the wealthy ones who are tossing their loot into the big Caribbean catcher’s mitt and playing ball on everybody else’s dime.

            Congress, that ever predictable AWOL gang, can mince around, eloquently reeking of tax reform that fixes nothing, but the problem they invariably ignore is the gaping Caribbean catcher’s mitt of tax evasion that lines the dugouts of the wealthy.  The big league game is still going…and around here, the Caribbean Pirates seem to be winning.  Why?!

Listening to Number 1                   

            Our number 1 Senator Gip Dungbeetle, home from D.C. on recess from the relentless pace of…passing things, stopped by on his lunch-and-listening tour of the wards and weirdo’s.  Naturally I made the list.  We met at Fast Foodie’s and seated ourselves to await a waitperson.  I told Gip I would buy.

            “Problem I’ve got, Senator,” I said when he asked, “is that nobody in congress is doing anything about jobs.  All we hear is ‘Austerity’ from all you all!”  I wrinkled my eyebrows and drew my mouth wide and flat to show my exasperation.

            “First of all,” he replied, “that’s Congress with a capital ‘C’ if you don’t mind.  Now look here, EVERYBODY knows that the way to create jobs is to cut federal spending and restore America to its former greatness!”

            “Yeah.  I get that a lot,” I said, suddenly sullen.  “What are you thinking?  Another war?  Then dishonorably discharge the walking wounded to save on clean up costs?  That would scream greatness!  And can we just agree to disagree on the capital ‘C’ issue?”

            “Don’t be flippant,” Gip spat!  “Our greatness comes from thriving citizens and low unemployment.  Consumers!  Who have money to spend because we encouraged the wealthy to create jobs for them!  To take care of them!

            “Here comes our server,” I remarked, giving up on the speaking part of this silly exercise.

            “Gip Dungbeetle,” he said smiling at the server. “I’ll take a Number Two, on him!”

Vouching for Excellence 

            It seems vouchers are one hot topic in today’s polarized political discourse.  Sincere proponents of school vouchers assure us it’s all for the benefit of the children and their excellence-seeking parents—that vouchers are the way to make American education the best in the world.  They might be right.  They might be wrong. 

Sincere opponents tell us that schools are just the latest objects of amorous attention from excuse-makers and money grabbers.  They protest that school vouchers insert religion into government and take money from public school systems already damaged by political parsimony.

            Whatever your particular predilection vis-à-vis vouchers, it’s no secret that public school performance sucks.  It is a nod away from becoming the most popular whispered explanation for unacceptable results: ‘Public school you know—what can you do?’

            We surely see that obscenely high school-superintendent salaries show a sorry return on investment.  We can also comprehend that our public school governing boards have sometimes been failures.  Drop out rates, and the tactics used to hide them are appalling.  Student disenchantment grows.  Schools are not managing change, and they are wasting dollars.  Around here we think school systems that pay ANY administrator more than six times what the lowest paid employee gets, are victimizing students, teachers, parents, and taxpayers.  Public school systems and administrators need to produce better results.  They can’t seem to do that without parental guidance.  But then, education is the last thing we should leave to the professionals.