Smelly "Cliff"

The more I read about this "cliff" deal, the smellier it gets.  The income tax hikes on "the wealthy" will raise about $22-23 billion dollars in 2013, that is, more than if the Bush tax cuts had been allowed to continue.  Yet....

At the President's insistence, the deal allows tax credits to energy and business interests (such as GE...hmmmm) that will reduce tax revenues by more than $66 billion.  Another one of the industries getting a nod in this is Hollywood; now there's a big surprise.  Film and television producers will get a lower tax bill in 2013, to the tune of $266 million.  Of course, if anyone needs a tax break, it has to be Hollywood.  Rum producers in the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico will have a reduced bill, too--about $200 million less.

I know Big Oil is subsidized, but I would guess all but the most close-minded zealots would agree that, if tax breaks/subsidies are to be handed out at all, something a little more vital than television, movies, and rum should get them.

And an enlightening article in the newspaper this AM, too.  Many Michigan tax-payers will be in for a rude awakening when filing their state income taxes this year.  Surprise, they will be paying more!

George Will had a good piece in today's paper.  It concerns the deficit and its nature.  Prior deficit spending by the federal government was used to benefit the present and the future.  For instance, the deficits of the 1940s helped to win WW2 and create the Interstate Highway System, which, again I'd say most people would agree, helped future generations of Americans as well as contemporaries.  Today's deficits are for our own aggrandizements, be they corporate or individual welfare, other grand schemes or policies--yet the payments will not come from us, but from our children and grandchildren.  Of course, that is if the US continues as it has for two hundred years and doesn't take the increasingly likely road of Greece, Spain, etc.

Will has two other things I liked.  One was a term, "connoisseurs of democratic decadence."  The other is a quotation from Churchill, "The gift of compressing the largest amount of words into the smallest amount of thought."  Will directed the Churchillian gem toward Obama, but there are many out there today to which it can apply.

I was thinking today and I'm not sure it has to do with anything.  When I started teaching, I took a sizable pay cut to do so.  It was my choice; so I'm not grumbling.  But my take-home pay that first year (and maybe the next couple as well) would not have been enough to cover my final year's room, board, and tuition bill at Amherst.  I visibly shook my head--I could have just had my paycheck sent to AC and I would have still owed more!  That strikes me.  And how is it, again, that these business-minded experts on education want to improve it?  By making teaching more attractive through lower salaries, fewer benefits, and more idiotic testing.  Great, just great.  It's wonderful to see those like our governor spout off about "best practices," as employed in businesses, but not really apply them to teachers/teaching.  Gee, isn't business (at least those who get the big bucks!) always telling us how necessary those big bucks are to attract the best talent for management?  It didn't seem to be working there for the auto industry, banks, investments, and more of the big shooters, did it?  Wasn't it Peter Drucker, another guru cited by the business community, who said if a company is having problems, it isn't the workers, it isn't the management, it's the guys at the top?  Ah, once again, being selective has its advantages.  Of course, I've already gone on record about my views of the quality of teachers.  There are some very, very outstanding ones.  Others are workable, just fine (not everyone can be a superstar).  But far too many teachers (and administrators) should be nowhere near a classroom or school.  That's not my point here.  Or maybe it is....  Maybe cutting pay and benefits will ensure even more lousy teachers.

And, speaking of those early days, I remembered Karen and I had for dinner two or three times a week Chunky Soup on rice, and generic rice it was, not Minute Rice.  Meat every night?  No, that didn't happen.  That's what we could afford, so that's what we ate.  I wonder if we insisted welfare recipients had the same diet how many howls there would be??????