Bullying - A personal story

 Bullying

I know bullying is kind of a hot topic and an issue for far too many kids in school today. I guess I was very lucky as I suffered very little from bullying when I was in school. I was always friendly with everyone even if I was somewhat nerdy. For the first six years of public school, I moved around a lot, but stayed in one place starting the middle of the sixth grade.

Among the friends I made in sixth grade was Larry, who was among the biggest kids in our school. Larry played football and I think got a college football scholarship. I remember in high school, one time another kid – Jim, I think – decided to pick on me. He grabbed my foot and lifted it up waist high so I was standing on one leg. He didn’t seem to want to let go.

Larry saw this, came up, and told Jim to leave me alone. Though Jim was a football player, Larry was bigger and tougher. Jim let go of my foot and never bothered me again. I don’t know how much of my lack of being bullied was because Larry told other kids to leave me alone, but it certainly made a difference that day.

2020 Election

 I’ve had a few friends who are to my left, who seem disturbed by having Joe Biden and Kamala Harris as the Democratic ticket. To be fair, neither one was my first or even second choice for the top or second spot on the ticket. I was an Elizabeth Warren supporter for the nomination and when she dropped out, I switched my support to Bernie Sanders. I suspect that some moderate and swing voters would have shunned their more progressive positions however, and neither one attracted much African-American support.

Biden did attract black support, even though earlier in his career, he was more closely aligned with quasi-segregationist views, and pushed laws that contributed to mass incarceration. He seems to have dialed that back and got kudos for being willing to be second banana to a black man as president. He has gotten a few more kudos by now choosing a black woman as his VP. Harris was pretty aggressive as a prosecutor, which resulted in more black men being jailed, but now pushes for criminal justice reform, including decriminalizing marijuana.

While Biden is not a true progressive, he is certainly liberal. As I recall, it was Biden who pushed Obama to support marriage equality. Trump has pushed to curtail LGBT rights and tried banning trans individuals from the military, along with supporting so called bathroom bills which banned trans from using bathrooms which matched their gender identity. The right wing had horror scenarios about trans women sexually assaulting cis women in bathrooms. The fact is more Republican legislators have sexually assaulted women than trans women have.

We have a number of foreign policy issues and the current administration has alienated many of our long time friends. Trump kowtows to Vladimir Putin, but I don't see that as gaining us anything of value. I know that Biden will begin to restore America's relations with most of its traditional allies. I am disturbed that Trump seems ready to rubber stamp Israeli annexation of much of the West Bank, where I am sure Biden will push back on that. Biden will also not suck up to Bibi, who Trump kisses up to all the time. 

Unlike Trump, I don't see Biden continuing to lock children up in filthy cages separated from their parents. Asylum seekers are not criminals and should not be treated as such. We don’t want open borders, but need a sane and sensible border policy that is not cruel or vindictive. I can’t imagine that Biden would continue the kinds of deportations of people that this administration has. Long term residents with no felony records should have a path to citizenship. Dreamers also need to be protected and given a path to citizenship.

Biden will reverse DeVos's horrid education policies and has expressed support for reduced costs for state colleges along with support for higher minimum wages. Under Trump, there has been an accelerated attempt to push people with student loans further into problems and even to try to collect on loans where the student was defrauded by the colleges they attended. There has also been a push under Trump to take money from public schools and give it to private schools.

The Supreme Court is another issue that must be considered. The GOP refused to even consider Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, instead allowing Trump to fill that spot. RBG is dealing with her third bout of cancer and I don't want her replaced by the likes of Kavanaugh. While John Roberts has proven to be somewhat independent from Trump, he still is pretty reliably right wing. I don’t want to see the court skewed hard to the right.

Trump crowed about trying to reverse the exodus of manufacturing from the United States. As to Trump's China policy, it has severely hurt American farmers without helping American manufacturing. He has also alienated the European Union, Canada, and others without adding any measurable number of manufacturing employment in the US. His tariffs have been a silent tax on American consumers, without appreciably helping American employers.

Trump has rolled back many environmental protections, allowing increased pollution of our air and water. He has pushed for increases to use of fossil fuels, even though clean energy is now price competitive with traditional energy. He has pulled us out of the Paris Accords on climate change, even though we continue to see increases in global warming. I have to believe Biden will reverse that.

I suppose I could go on at even greater length. I disapprove of nearly everything Trump is doing and has done. I hate his open corruption and his constant lying and trying to demonize anyone who opposes him. Sure, I'd rather see a true progressive in there, but that is not among our realistic choices. Biden and Harris are more progressive than any other choice that has any chance of success. As the old saying goes, half a loaf is better than none.

When did coronavirus arrive

The story has been that the first cases in Wuhan were in December and it arrived in the US in late January, so those of us who had corona-like symptoms in December had something else, not coronavirus. Now some folks have looked at satellite images and found a sharp spike in hospital visits in Wuhan starting in August, months before there should have been any corona.

Is there an explanation for the hospital visit spike? No, as a matter of fact, there is not. Do we know that the visits were corona related? No, we don’t and the Chinese deny that that spike was due to corona. Then again, it has become obvious that the Chinese have not exactly been honest about the corona outbreak. There was a spike in casket deliveries to Wuhan far exceeding reported corona deaths.

In December, I had a persistent cough, with little congestion and when I visited a doctor specializing in lung diseases in January, they found lung impairment beyond any that I had previously had. They did CT scans of my lungs and found scarring – pulmonary fibrosis. I was supposed to see a specialist, but that was about the time corona started to take off and I wasn’t able to schedule that.

Do I know what I had? No, I don’t and I haven’t been tested for corona. Most of my symptoms have cleared and I don’t want them sticking a q-tip all the way back to my brain. My symptoms at the time and the aftermath are consistent with corona. I am socially isolating and have been for some time, and I wear a mask in public, and have for some time.

For those people who had similar symptoms back in November and December and were told ‘you could not possibly have had corona’, I’d say, you just might have. I think the jury is out on that, based on the latest reports. Honestly, I’m not one for conspiracy theories, but I think the authorities could well be mistaken on the arrival of coronavirus.

Violence versus Nonviolence

I've seen some criticism for my commitment to nonviolent protest and my opposition to violence and rioting. I understand that sadly nobody paid attention when the protests were peaceful. Still, I feel that violence undermines our cause. To make real change, we need a majority of the people behind us. Clearly the far right never will be, but we need the help and support of the middle.

I want change. I want the police to be accountable for their violent acts. I want an end to the Trump regime and its support of racism. I will continue to speak out loudly for those things. While I understand the roots of the violence in the protests, I cannot condone that violence. I want Trump and his minions voted out in November and I want pressure on local and state governments to clean racism out of policing.

When the police do wrong, and they very clearly do, and all too often, I want them arrested and brought to trial for their acts. If we start locking up police for their abuse, the other cops will think twice before  brutalizing suspects. We must change, and we must have justice for ALL our citizens. Police, prosecutors, and judges who contribute or allow violence against people must be brought down - but without violence.

Violent Protests

But when you talk about destruction, Don't you know that you can count me out. – Lennon & McCartney

The violence seems to be spreading and is now hitting closer to home. Only a few miles from where I live, protests have turned violent and buildings have been looted and even destroyed. It included a Champs sporting goods store that I was frankly unfamiliar with. It also included a CVS pharmacy that my sister in law and her husband use regularly and which I’ve been in. There was damage to a gas station that I drive by regularly, though I don’t stop there since I think they are over-priced.

When the Beatles wrote and sang “Revolution”, they said everything would be all right. I can only hope it all ends up all right, because it sure isn’t that way now. I understand the causes for this and fully support peaceful protests. Too many police officers are too quick to act violently toward black suspects. Other people, invariably racist are also quick to resort to violence against blacks and Hispanics. Just in the past week, we have had three incidents where black people were killed unjustly.

That has to change, and no, we cannot simply sit around and offer thoughts and prayers. We have to protest and have to call people, including police to account when they act violently against blacks and other minorities. I do not and will not condone violence and looting, but I fully support protests. Sadly, the only time people seem to pay attention is when protests turn violent. There were protests in my town against what has happened, but little or no mention of them, until they turned violent.

I saw something on social media about a protest planned for today near me. I had expressed some interest, but under the circumstances, have no intention of being anywhere near it. Quite apart from social distancing and Covid-19 concerns, I will not be party to violence. Too many people will blame the violence solely on one group or another, but sadly there are those on both sides of the political spectrum and of all ethnicities who choose to escalate protests into violence.

And the person who should be trying to calm people down and assure them things will change – he is instead enflaming people with his own violent rhetoric. When I was much younger, I took part in protests against the Vietnam War. In at least one of those, there was violence instigated by the police. Say what you will, but I was there and saw the whole thing myself. I want change, and will speak out for change and vote for change. I may even take part in protests if I’m sure they will be peaceful.

I want no part of violence, and I want no part of destruction. I fully sympathize with those protesting and agree with their aims of making this country a racially just country. I want an end to violence perpetrated against people because of the color of their skin or because of which deity they choose to worship. I want this country to have justice for all its citizens, not just the white, Christian, middle class citizens. I will clearly promote my beliefs, but can never take part in violence.

Right Wing Insults

I see far too many right wing people who are downright rude and insulting about people who are left of center. That is frankly disturbing, but sadly there is not much I can do about it. I am decidedly left of center and will make no apologies for that. I’ve spent years reading and listening in building my political views, but I do not dismiss others based on their politics.

I will disagree with policies that I think are misguided. I will condemn actions that I feel are harmful to others or to society as a whole. I want to be civil in my views however and not be insulting to people who don’t agree with me.

Frankly, there are conservatives whom I respect. I may often disagree with their positions, but I can respect them because they are thoughtful and civil in how they present their views. Among pundits I respect David Brooks and George Will, along with Charles Krauthammer, who passed a couple of years ago. I also respected William F. Buckley, who passed some years ago.

There have been several Republican presidents who I’ve had a great deal of respect for, including Dwight Eisenhower, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln. More recently, I think Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush were good men, though not necessarily good presidents. I have some respect for Mitt Romney and had respect for John McCain, though I voted against each.

For all his faults, and he had many, Richard Nixon established the Environmental Protection Agency and opened relations with China. I disagreed with many of his policies, but Ronald Reagan was not a hard core ideologue, and was willing to compromise. I was not at all fond of George W. Bush, though compared to Donald Trump, he was a shining beacon of light.

We now have a Republican president who lies constantly, who insults anyone who disagrees with him, and who seems determined to enrich himself and promote his ego at the expense of the country as a whole. He is enabled by a GOP Senate that largely rubber stamps anything that he wants. He also seems to encourage and excuse bigotry and violence among his supporters.

There was a time when we had bipartisanship. Republicans and Democrats could work together for joint goals for the betterment of the country. That has basically disappeared. You can try to blame both sides, but it seems the GOP is quite unwilling to compromise at this point. They seem to have placed their party and Mr. Trump above the good of the country. That is sad.

I won’t get into my policy positions at this point, but on the whole, there is little or nothing in Mr. Trump’s agenda that I could ever support. Because of my views, I’ve been called a libtard, a snowflake, and a moron, among other things. I cannot find common ground with anyone who would so blithely resort to insults.

Massive Budget Deficits

I saw a casual friend who expressed deep concern about the cost of Covid-19 mitigation and what that would do over the longer term to the United States. That is certainly a valid concern, since we were on track to have a trillion dollar deficit this year even before the pandemic, and we’ve now committed to spending trillions more to mitigate the damage to the economy from this.

The first question is how we even deal with this. The simple answer of course is higher revenue (i.e. higher taxes) and lower spending. We have to have some way of doing both that does not cripple the economy. We then need to muster the political will to actually implement the necessary changes. With both, there will be people who are hurt and those people will apply political pressure to avoid paying for those changes.

The second question is who pays for this and how do we implement it. I have my own ideas, and while I have a decent foundation in economics, I can’t readily calculate the full costs of the changes. The Covid-19 relief efforts should be a short term thing. We can’t ignore them, but should not base our entire strategy on something that should phase out probably within the next year. That said, our primary concern should be in crafting something that will largely eliminate the trillion dollar deficit we were already expecting.

On the top of my list would be repealing the 2017 Trump tax cuts. The cost of that alone has been estimated at over 2 trillion dollars over several years. In itself that would not even erase the previous annual deficit, but at least it would reduce it. While many people got at least some benefit from those tax cuts, the lion’s share went to the wealthiest individuals and corporations.

The second thing I’d do is raise the top marginal tax rates. In the 1950s and early 1960s, when the economy was doing quite well, our top marginal income tax rate was 90% or more. Businesses still thrived, and people still became wealthy even at that. I don’t think we should go back to that, but instead of the current 37%, I think we should have the top tax rate at 50%, which it was during much of Ronald Reagan’s administration. I understand that the wealthy have means of sheltering income from taxation so very little income would actually be taxed at that rate, but it would help.

Corporate taxes need to increase as well. Right now in this country we have corporations making billions of dollars of income while paying little or nothing in the way of taxes. Corporate tax rates have dropped and companies use all manner of clever means to dodge US income taxes. Some of that comes from sheltering income overseas through foreign subsidiaries. They can use foreign manufacturing along with playing with transfer pricing to show the income where is will be more leniently taxed. We need to begin to tax that foreign income, along with raising corporate tax rates.

We need to raise inheritance taxes. Only a tiny proportion of estates have to pay any tax at all, by most estimates less than 1%, and while the top inheritance tax rate is 40% the average estate that is taxed pays only 17%. The truly wealthy shelter their estates through trusts and other means to protect them from estate taxes. While we might not get a huge amount from this, it is an important signal.

Currently hedge fund managers only pay income tax at the capital gains rate. The idea of lower rates for capital gains was to encourage investment and compensate for putting money at risk. Those individuals have no money of their own at risk, but make money on how well their investors do. Since they have no money at risk, they should pay standard tax rates.

We need to raise or even eliminate the cap on Social Security and Medicare taxes. Currently we only tax the first $137,700 in income for Social Security and Medicare. While those funds currently have a surplus, it is estimated that by 2035 they will run out of money. That would be devastating to retirees and would likely require benefit cuts.

We also need to take a look at spending cuts. The US currently spends as much on its military as the next ten countries put together. We have roughly 800 military bases in some 70 countries with tens of thousands of troops stationed overseas. Do we need all of those bases and all of those troops there? We spend many billions on new weapons, some of which don’t even work properly. We buy weapons which even the Pentagon says we don’t need, because the manufacturing is in certain congressional districts. There is clearly money to be saved if we take a hard look and make some hard decisions.

We also spend billions in subsidies to already highly profitable companies. We give massive tax breaks to fossil fuel companies even as we know that burning those fossil fuels increases global warming and in many cases costs more than using renewable energy sources.

This is honestly only the tip of the iceberg. There is much that we can do to bring the federal budget into line. There will be pain to some companies and individuals, but that is part of the price if we truly want a healthy economy going forward.

FDR and the Death of Jews in the Holocaaust

Well, I lost another friend. They started on this thing about how FDR was antisemitic and that caused the death of Jews in the Holocaust. It is true that Jews died that might otherwise have lived. Most countries had limits on the number of Jews who were allowed to enter.

Roosevelt could have raised US limits, but didn't, and frankly he didn't because there was a deep streak of antisemitism in American society at the time. FDR was not going to go against that in order to save Jews, which is sad to say. At the time when Jews were being allowed to leave Europe, the Holocaust had not yet begun.

There were things like the MS St Louis with 937 Jews, which was not allowed to land in the US. Canada and Cuba also would not allow the MS St Louis to land. Roughly a quarter of those Jews died in the Holocaust.

Beyond that, during the war, some wanted the rail lines into the concentration camps bombed, which would have slowed transport to the camps. Instead FDR allowed the military to focus on attacking supplies, ammunition, and reinforcements for the German army. This probably shortened the war, and it is arguable which saved more lives.

My erstwhile friend essentially blamed FDR for the deaths of 4 million Jews, which is patently absurd. When I challenged her on that, she went off on me altogether. I have no problem with civil discourse and factual arguments, but when you become insulting and irrational, you will no longer be a friend.

Joe Biden Sexual Assault Accusation

I read about the sexual assault charge against Biden. It is somewhat disturbing. He backed a woman up against a wall, put his hand under her skirt and put his finger in her. When she reacted poorly, he backed off and tried to laugh it off. Biden denies that and there were no witnesses.

Also it happened in 1993, some 27 years ago. I note that the statute of limitations for sexual assault in DC is 10 to 15 years, depending on circumstances, and the assault was said to take place in his senate offices.

There do not seem to be any other women with similar accusations, though more than a few have said he hugged them in ways that made them uncomfortable. He has also said he's changed his behavior in that regard.

In contrast, we have Trump, who has had more than 20 women accuse him of sexual assault, while he was recorded talking about grabbing women by the p***y, and bragged about walking into the dressing rooms of underage females while they were not dressed.

I will not excuse Biden's behavior or dismiss the accusations against him. I still feel that he is by far the lesser of the evils in the presidential race.

Bad choices

How do you deal with people who make bad choices that affect primarily themselves?

My mother had open heart surgery and had two heart values replaced. Her heart stopped when she was in pre-op and they had to revive her, just to do the surgery. After surgery, she quit drinking and smoking for several years. Eventually, she decided she didn't have that long to live anyhow, and she wanted to do what she enjoyed so she went back to smoking and drinking. She was dead of a heart attack within a year.

My father was a long time smoker. He actually quit a couple of times, but only briefly and went back to smoking. He was diagnosed with emphysema but continued to smoke. He developed congestive heart failure, but smoked until he was put on oxygen 24 hours a day. As far as I know, he stopped smoking then, but the damage was done. He died of congestive heart failure, though she managed to live longer than my mother - his ex-wife.

They both did what they knew was bad for them, and died years earlier than they might otherwise have done. There was nothing I could do about either one but watch.

Flat tax

From time to time, I hear people pushing for a flat tax, trying to argue that it would be fairer than the current income tax code. Flat tax is actually regressive. Unfortunately, it's far from perfect and in any real-world incarnation would be a lot worse than the current code on at least two key dimensions: fairness and fiscal. It's a highly regressive tax that would mean the loss of gobs of revenue. Moreover, its simplicity is a ruse.

The thing that complicates the tax code is not the number of rates. It's the myriad ways in which we define different types of income. It's all the preferences, deductions and credits. Now, you might argue that a flat tax will get rid of those, but all that tells me is that a) you don't know the tax lobby, and b) you're one of the few people who's not running for president.

I deduce 'b' from the fact that I find it extremely hard to envision a viable candidate who tells people that she's going to get rid of the mortgage interest deduction. Or, if she's a Republican (or a Wall Street-oriented Democrat), that she's going to get rid of tax preferences for capital gains, dividends, and the interest-based financing that's the mother's milk of private equity investors.

The regressivity of the flat tax is another big problem. Our current federal income tax code is progressive (rates rise with income), and every distributional analysis I've ever seen of a flat tax shows a transfer of the tax burden from the wealthy to the middle class. According to the Tax Policy Center's score of the Perry tax plan, the tax bill of families with incomes between $30,000 and 40,000 would go up by about $450, while that of millionaires would fall by about half a million bucks.